Levkin Research Group

Our newest publication in Angewandte Chemie! We synthesized 325 analogues of mirdametinib, screened them on HT29 colon cancer cells, and identified 46 hits that showed equal or even higher activity compared to the clinically approved mirdametinib. Huge thanks to all co-authors—special thanks to our first authors Maximilian Seifermann Julius Höpfner, and Liana Bauer—and to our outstanding collaborators Prof. Dr. Carsten Hopf and Stefan Schmidt from the Center for Mass Spectrometry and Optical Spectroscopy (CeMOS) in Mannheim!

Check out the paper here.

This work presents a novel approach for the extraction or addition of substances and purification of chemical synthesis in a miniaturized, high-throughput (HT) manner. It is based on high droplet stability on the Droplet Microarray (DMA), allowing the complete immersion of a miniaturized array with up to 2688 15 nL-droplets into an organic solvent and simultaneous treatment of all droplets. Congratulations to Michelle J. Iwohn and Janne J. Wiedmann!

Check out the paper here.

Our annual Poster & Pizza workshop between Levkin, Moritz Kreysing and Lennart Hilbert research groups at the institute. It was wonderful to see so many students and posters!

For several years, our research group has been participating in this exciting event—the Dragon Boat competition on the Neckar River in Heidelberg. It is probably the best team-building activity one can imagine: 19 group members and friends in the same boat, competing against other teams. It was once again an amazing event on the beautiful banks of the Neckar, with Heidelberg Castle on the other side. The times of our three races were 1:21.52, 1:23.77, and 1:15.30 🥳. Thanks to everyone who participated and organized!

Exciting and important news! Our excellence cluster 3D Matter made to order was funded by the DFG! 🥳

Congratulations Dr. Maryam for winning the student poster prize at the SLAS Europe conference 2025. Well done! 🥳

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are important for biological research, vaccine development, cell transfection, etc. Unfortunately, in our experience, in vitro transfection does not directly translate to successful in vivo gene delivery. In this Advanced Healthcare Materials paper, which was an amazing collaboration with Merck Life Science, we designed and synthesized several novel unsaturated lipids with novel slightly more hydrophobic head groups and studied their LNPs. Most importantly, through intelligent design of the lipid structures (both headgroup and tail), we were able to develop LNPs without fusogenic activity in blood cells, with the right pKa, and finally with highly efficient mRNA delivery in vivo. I recommend reading this paper for those who work on lipid synthesis, LNPs, and vaccine development. Thanks to Eleni Samaridou, Johanna Simon, Moritz Beck-Broichsitter, Gary Davidson for the great joint project!

Check out the paper here.

Every year, our group escapes the lab for a short retreat — three days of fresh air and deep thoughts. We talk, discuss science, do brainstorming sessions, cook and hike together. This year, we spent our retreat in beautiful Bavaria — and of course, we visited a beer brewery. Always grateful for these moments of science, nature, and fun with an amazing team. 🤩

Our paper on electrode droplet microarrays (eDMA) is now on the cover of Advanced Healthcare Materials. Very nice photograph, so it had to go to the cover;) Thanks to Anna Popova and Heinz-Georg Jahnke for the nice work and congrats to all the authors.

Check out the paper here.

In this paper, we demonstrate the encapsulation of cells or individual cell spheroids within nanoliter-scale hydrogels. This method enables on-demand immobilization of cells or cell spheroids on an array slide, facilitating subsequent culturing, washing, or immersion into media without cell detachment. The selective gelation of individual droplets is particularly interesting, as it allows for sorting cells or single-cell spheroids by stabilizing desired droplets while removing unwanted spheroids from the surface through simple washing. This approach holds potential for high-throughput cell screenings and miniaturized workflows in 3D microenvironments, advancing research in fields such as cell, spheroid or organoid screenings, drug discovery, and precision medicine.

Check out the paper here.

Yesterday, our group visited Wiley in Weinheim, we had a great time talking to the editors and left our mark on their wall at the end! ;)

Congratulations to our two PhD students on successfully defending their dissertations! The celebration continued at our annual Christmas party. Well done!:)

Ever wondered how to perform tens of thousands of nanoliter droplet manipulations in a truly parallel fashion? Here we show a method that enables parallel medium exchange in thousands of nanoliter-scale cell cultures, facilitates the extraction of nanoliter-sized aliquots from thousands of nanodroplets, and allows for the simultaneous transfer of single-cell spheroids between individual 200 nL droplets—in seconds and across thousands of droplets at once! 💪

Check out the paper here.

Today’s photo of our amazing research group dedicated to Dr. Maximilian Seifermann’s farewell party after nearly four incredible years with us. Wishing Max all the best in his future endeavors! 💪

One of the greatest advantages of working in academia is being constantly surrounded by smart, talented, and eternally young people 😂

Functional Surfaces and Micropatterns: from Superhydrophobicity to Drug Discovery. Lecture at the Wiley´s Advanced Summit in September 2024. Many thanks to the entire Wiley team and all the editors of Advanced journals for organizing this wonderful symposium.

Watch the lecture here.

Our paper "Highly Parallel and High-Throughput Nanoliter-Scale Liquid, Cell, and Spheroid Manipulation on Droplet Microarray" has been accepted in Advanced Functional Materials!

Congratulations to Joaquin, Anna, Mei, Nikolaj, Julian, Julius, Sida and Markus🥳

Our paper "Drug‐Induced Differential Gene Expression Analysis on Nanoliter Droplet Microarrays: Enabling Tool for Functional Precision Oncology" has been accepted in Advanced Healthcare Materials!

Congratulations to Razan, Anna, Shraddha, Mei and all co-authors! 💪

We have enhanced the temperature responsiveness of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) hydrogels by incorporating hierarchical porosity into the polymer. Nanometer-sized pores were created through polymerization-induced phase separation, while larger pores were formed using 3D printing. This has resulted in PNIPAM 3D structures that exhibit very fast temperature-responsiveness, despite their macroscopic size. Check out our latest paper. Read the full article here.