Lauer Matthias E

Dr. Matthias E Lauer is Senior Principal Scientist at F. Hoffmann - La Roche Ltd. and supports the drug discovery unit of the Pharma Research Division. He established the cryo EM facility and the nanoscience laboratory of the Roche Innovation Center Basel. As a physical chemist his thesis dedicated the synthesis and physical characterization of light harvesting supramolecular porphyrin assemblies with Prof. Dr. Jurgen-Hinrich Fuhrhop at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. As a DFG Postdoc he joined the group of Prof. Dr. Helen and Prof. Dr. Paul Hansma at the Physics Department of the University of California Santa Barbara, United States. At the Biozentrum of the University Basel Switzerland and with Prof. Dr. Andreas Engel, he established applications of cryo-TEM and AFM in drug discovery and pharmaceutical research, to join Roche in 2010. Since, he supports teams focused on drug and biomarker discovery with a focus on neurodegenerative diseases. In this role, he initiated and moved an outstanding imaging study, which dedicated the visualization of Lewy Pathology in Parkinson Disease on the nanoscale. Human brains with short post mortem delay were analyzed with complementary imaging methods, the results were published in 2019 and have transformative impact. Over the years, many innovative methods were moved into lab routines, they enable to analyze the particle structures and properties, which guide drug discovery and pharmaceutical research in industry, on the level of single particles. - Structure determination of drug target interactions with high-resolution cryo EM. - Time resolved AFM to monitor the action of antibody architectures and conformational changes in complex with disease related targets. - High-resolution imaging of therapeutic proteins to predict the risk of side product formation in early discovery phases. - Structure and behavior of viral capsids and lipid nanoparticles to enable the delivery of genes and RNAs in early and late phases. - Scanning Probe Microscopy to monitor the molecular mobility in solid dosage forms and to predict shelf life stability within hours instead of month. - Nanoindentation testing to predict the risk of mechanical failure in late stage technical processes. Currently, he is collaborating with innovative partners in academia and industry to enable the discovery of next generation medicines.