Joint Lab Shadowing at the Institute of Continuum Mechanics and Biomechanics
At the beginning of November, the Institute of Continuum Mechanics and Biomechanics, led by Prof. Silvia Budday, welcomed two guests for a joint lab shadowing. Majahonkhe Shabangu, currently visiting from Prof. Franz’s Mechanobiology Lab at the University of Cape Town, collaborated with Michael Tranchina from the Institute of Biochemistry (Prof. Karow and Dr. Falk; Project A04) to investigate the mechanical properties of mature organoids. Together with Oskar Neumann and Harsh Surana (Project B01), spherical indentation experiments were performed to explore the previously unknown mechanical signatures of fully developed brain organoids and to identify potential correlations with their biological composition.
In addition, Majahonkhe conducted initial exploratory trials on mechanical mapping of multicellular spheroids — a first step toward establishing a testing protocol suitable for spheroid samples in future experiments at the University of Cape Town. We would also like to gratefully acknowledge Jan Hinrichsen (Biomechanics, Project A01) for his support in designing and fabricating a manual slicer used for tissue sectioning.
Both activities provided valuable hands-on experience in handling highly sensitive, small-scale biological samples under mechanical loading and generated promising first insights. These results will contribute to the development of robust testing protocols and help address existing research gaps within the CRC.
Oskar Neumann, B01