PhD researcher in regenerative medicine investigating antimicrobial technology based on bioactive...

The Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) is a program where the public, stakeholders and researchers jointly identify questions, investigate these and share and implement the knowledge acquired. The aim of this is to further encourage the high-quality science climate in the Netherlands and to realise societal and scientific breakthroughs. Within the NWA programmes, the innovative character should be expressed in interdisciplinarity and the knowledge chain-wide composition of consortia.

NWA is providing a grant of 9.8 million euros to the DARTBAC project: Dutch Antimicrobial Resistance Technology development and Biofilm Assessment Consortium. The industry partners of the DARTBAC consortium contribute an additional 1.3 million euros to the budget. An international interdisciplinary consortium of 23 partners led by MUMC+ investigating dr. Chris Arts will spend the next 6 years researching new technological solutions to the explosively growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The research focuses on the development of alternatives to traditional antibiotics, through the use of new material technology.

DARTBAC will:

• From a material perspective, develop new antimicrobial technologies that are not based on classic antibiotics to target infection prevention and -eradication on implant surfaces, in hard tissues, and in soft tissues;
• Assess safety and efficacy of these newly developed antimicrobial technologies;
• Enhance the therapeutic efficacy of current antibiotics by combination therapy;
• Develop a new workflow based of predictive in vitro and in vivo models to test safety and efficacy of newly developed antimicrobial technology in order to shorten the time to-market;
• Maintain awareness of the emerging AMR problem in the Netherlands by informing the general public and Health Care Professionals.

The duties of the candidate for this position will consist of setting up, coordinating and conducting experiments; the processing and analysis of the data, as well as writing scientific articles and giving presentations at national and international conferences.

Within Maastricht University Medical Centre communication with especially the department of Medical Microbiology and our industry partner Bonalive will be pivotal.

Specific scientific tasks for the function include:

• Development of novel biomaterials for application in or on medical devices;
• In vitro determination of safety and efficacy of new antimicrobial technologies;
• Assessment of material-soft tissue interaction using in vitro and in vivo models with additional focus on cell biology and angiogenesis;
• Translation of research results toward clinical implementation.