Welcome to the department of Prof. Katharina Landfester

Physical Chemistry of Polymers

The Landfester Group 2023

The Landfester Group 2023

We view it as our mission to create colloids with increasingly specific and complex properties for new materials and bio-medical applications and to use the confinement of stable nanodroplets to tune chemical reactions and transformation processes. Particles suspended in a liquid, known as a colloid, are versatile and flexible in their uses. They are found everywhere in our daily lives, from mother's milk to adhesives and automobile paint to the most modern technologies. The special properties of colloids can therefore be adapted in each case to the intended purpose. That facilitates the enormous versatility of the miniemulsion process. From the encapsulation of dedicated molecules, like drugs, self-healing agents etc. through to generation of extremely small nanostructures, these simple spheres can be utilised with a highly uniform size and a defined functionality of the surface. The significance of the miniemulsion technique is that it is possible to use a wide variety of polymerization techniques with a wide range of monomers. Hereby important factors like size, shape, degradation, release kinetics, surface functionalization can be precisely tuned as requested. The continual progress in knowledge about the properties of nanoscale objects and their interactions with living tissue like cells or with electromagnetic radiation opens diverse opportunities.


Highlight Publications

Confining the Sol-Gel Reaction at the Water/Oil Interface: Creating Compartmentalized Enzymatic Nano-Organelles for Artificial Cells 
J. P. Gonçalves, D. Promlok, T. Ivanov, S. Tao, T. Rheinberger, S.-M. Jo, Y. Yu, R. Graf, M. Wagner, D. Crespy, F. R. Wurm, L. Caire da Silva, S. Jiang and K. Landfester
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, 62, e202216966

© 1999-2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved more
Tunable Photocatalytic Selectivity by Altering the Active Center Microenvironment of an Organic Polymer Photocatalyst
J. Heuer, T. Kuckhoff, R. Li, K. Landfester and C. T. J. Ferguson
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2023

© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society more
A new methodology combining QCM-D and proteomic profiling enables characterization of protein adsorption on 2D surfaces
M. Martínez Negro, J. Oberländer, J. Simon, V. Mailänder, S. Morsbach and K. Landfester
J. Colloid Interface Sci. 2023, 630, 965-972

© 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. more
Membrane Manipulation of Giant Unilamellar Polymer Vesicles with a Temperature-Responsive Polymer
M. de Souza Melchiors, T. Ivanov, I. Harley, C. Sayer, P. H. H. Araújo, L. Caire da Silva, C. T. J. Ferguson and K. Landfester
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2022, e202207998

© 2022 The Authors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH GmbH more
Achieving dendritic cell subset-specific targeting in vivo by site-directed conjugation of targeting antibodies to nanocarriers
J. Simon, M. Fichter, G. Kuhn, M. Brückner, C. Kappel, J. Schunke, T. Klaus, S. Grabbe, K. Landfester and V. Mailänder
Nano Today 2022, 43, 101375

© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. more
Aerobic Photobiocatalysis Enabled by Combining Core–Shell Nanophotoreactors and Native Enzymes
W. Wei, F. Mazzotta, I. Lieberwirth, K. Landfester, C. T. J. Ferguson and K. A. I. Zhang
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 16, 7320–7326

© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society more
Light-Activated Membrane Transport in Polymeric Cell-Mimics
S. Cao, L. Caire da Silva and K. Landfester
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2022, e202205266

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc. more
Peptidomimetic inhibitors of TMPRSS2 block SARS-CoV-2 infection in cell culture
L. Wettstein, P. M. Knaff, C. Kersten, P. Müller, T. Weil, C. Conzelmann, J. A. Müller, M. Brückner, M. Hoffmann, S. Pöhlmann, T. Schirmeister, K. Landfester, J. Münch and V. Mailänder
Commun. Biol. 2022, 5, 681

© 2022 Springer Nature Limited more
Tetrathienothiophene Porphyrin as a Metal-Free Sensitizer for Room-Temperature Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Upconversion
A. Vasilev, A. Kostadinov, M. Kandinska, K. Landfester and S. Baluschev
Front. Chem. 2022, 10, 809863

© 2022 Frontiers Media S.A. more

Media

Nanocapsules for Drug Delivery
The research group led by Prof. Dr. Katharina Landfester lets you take a look behind the scenes. The video explains the individual synthesis steps in the laboratory and which quality controls have to be passed to be able to produce the "perfect" nanocapsule. more
ESCApe-project on television
How can vines be protected from the disease "Esca"? ZDF has now reported on the project around Frederik Wurm (Department  Landfester) in the midday magazine. The report can be viewed in the ZDF Mediathek. more
Projekt „Escape“
Frederik Wurm stellt das Projekt „Escape“ vor, in dem es um die Bekämpfung der Weinrebenkrankheit „Esca“ geht. Der Film wurde im Rahmen der 75-Jahr-Feier von Rheinland-Pfalz gedreht. more
Der Kunststoff Bildungspfad
Was weiß ich eigentlich schon alles über Kunststoffe? Vieles kennt man aus dem Schulunterricht, noch mehr aus den Medien, oft mit dem Ergebnis: Es gibt zahlreiche verschiedene Kunststoffe, aber warum und mit welchen Funktionen? Schlecht für die Umwelt ist ein Argument, das uns ständig begegnet. Aber weiß ich auch, wann genau Kunststoffe umweltschädigend sind und wann sie ein echter Wertstoff sind? more
The guest commentary by Prof. Katharina Landfester on "Chemistry of colours" at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt is now online.

Science meets art

The guest commentary by Prof. Katharina Landfester on "Chemistry of colours" at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt is now online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJk8BFYtLZk
Talkshow and documentary about plastics
Prof. Katharina Landfester had a TV show appearance at 3Sat Scobel. more

Seminars and lectures

Prof. Katharina Landfester joined Sarah Köster (University of Göttingen) and Joachim Rädler (LMU Munich) to present and discuss the many possibilities of microfluidics in the field of biomimetic material sciences. This online event was part of the discussion series organized by the Max Planck School - Matter to Life. Now available on YouTube.

Microfluidics

Prof. Katharina Landfester joined Sarah Köster (University of Göttingen) and Joachim Rädler (LMU Munich) to present and discuss the many possibilities of microfluidics in the field of biomimetic material sciences. This online event was part of the discussion series organized by the Max Planck School - Matter to Life. Now available on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zVx3rHAFYg
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