AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH is Austria’s largest non-university R&D institution with over 1.300 employees. Its vision is to bridge the gap between basic research and applied science. AIT is structured into eight centres reflecting its priorities in the key infrastructure issues of the future. AIT participates in this project through the competence unit Molecular Diagnostics of the Center for Health & Bioresources. The goal of this competence unit is to provide novel biomarkers, molecular assays, bioinformatics procedures, biosensors as well as fully integrated point-of-care devices for the whole range of medical and health applications, with a focus on non-invasive or minimally invasive diagnostics. This includes, e.g., general health monitoring, early diagnosis, disease risk prediction, disease monitoring in chronic conditions and prediction of disease progression, patient stratification, and companion diagnostics. Systems biology and systems medicine approaches within our bioinformatics group allow to investigate disease causes and mechanisms. In addition, the unit has research groups focusing on biological barriers, DNA technologies, and novel technologies in electrodynamic cell manipulation. The unit comprises a highly interdisciplinary team of about 50 scientists and laboratory technicians with expertise in biology, physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, and computational sciences (bioinformatics).

Role within ImmUniverse

AIT will contribute its expertise on liquid biopsy, multiplex validation assay and bioinformatics to ImmUniverse and lead work package 5. In detail, AIT will perform in work package 2 part of the genome-wide bulk tissue and blood methylome screening and will do proteome-wide antibody profiling in serum samples as well as small RNA sequencing from exosomes. AIT’s tasks in work package 3 will comprise targeted biomarker profiling (miRNA, DNA methylation, proteins and antibodies) in LIPUS- and OFM derived liquid samples. In work package 4 AIT will be responsible for the integrative data analysis of work package 2-derived multi-omics layer data to come up with candidate signatures for disease prediction and classification to be verified in work package 5. In work package 5, AIT will be finally involved in the setup of various signature verification assays (e.g. miRNA, DNA methylation, mRNA, protein/antibodies) and apply these assays in a high number of patients and various sample types (e.g. tissue, blood, plasma, exosomes).