Modern medicine requires methods of minimally invasive surgery, targeted therapy, and alternative organ-preserving technologies. An accurate diagnostics of a pathological process at early stage as well as detailed knowledge of molecular and cellular mechanisms of diseases are needed for these approaches.
New direction of fluorescent imaging is a prospective technology based on the state-of-the-art optics, biomedicine and biotechnology. Fluorescent proteins (FPs) are widely used as genetically encoded in vivo probes, and their importance was recognized by 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. To date, FP technologies comprise a whole toolkit for visualization of structural organization and dynamic processes in living cells and organisms.
The project was aimed at development and application of novel approaches to investigation of molecular mechanisms of biological processes and to directed manipulation with live systems using fluorescent markers of the last generation.
The main research directions were whole-body and super-resolution imaging using far-red fluorescent proteins; genetically encoded photosensitizers for light-induced cell killing; redox regulation of basic pathophysiological processes.