Overview
We are pleased to invite you to a lecture by Dr. Markus Elsner, Deputy Director of the Institute for Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine at Helmholtz Munich, as part of the MASIT Seminar Series, organized by HI-TRON Mainz in collaboration with the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) Mainz.
Title: From Whole-Body Maps to Targeted Delivery: AI-Driven Tools for Systems Biomedicine
Date: Tuesday, 9 June 2026
Time: 11:00-12:00
On-site:
Seminar Room
Ackermannweg 4
55128 Mainz
Online:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83788503820?pwd=t6sIvdQ3jzAfFzRxwaaSBZ8XdXwttj.1
Meeting-ID: 837 8850 3820
Kenncode: 166741
Abstract: A fundamental limitation in both disease biology and drug development is our inability to observe phenotypic changes or track drug distribution with high resolution across the whole organism. This presentation will show how whole-body clearing, imaging, and AI-based approaches can help to overcome this challenge. Our MouseMapper pipeline addresses the first challenge: a foundation-model-based deep-learning framework enabling quantitative whole-body mapping of nerves and immune cells across most mouse organs, here revealing unsuspected systemic pathologies in diet-induced obesity. SCP-Nano uses a similar approach to drug delivery, providing single-cell-resolution biodistribution maps of nanocarriers throughout the entire mouse body — demonstrating, for example, that intramuscularly injected LNPs carrying mRNA reach cardiac tissue. Finally, LipiGo shows how such whole-body imaging can guide rational nanoparticle engineering, redirecting mRNA delivery toward lymphoid tissues and enabling modular, cell-type-specific targeting. Together, these tools make organism-scale, single-cell-resolution analysis a practical reality in preclinical research.
