Nobel Prize for Chemistry Has Beiersdorf Connection

GERMANY: This year’s announcement of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was especially interesting for Beiersdorf Research & Development team as it honored one of the company’s cooperation partners.

Dr. Stefan Hell, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, together with Eric Betzig and William Moerner from the US, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his groundbreaking invention of STED Microscopy. With the so-called GSDIM Technology, Dr. Frank Fischer, head of the Beiersdorf Research Microscopy Lab, uses an advancement of the method of the German Nobel Prize winner. GSDIM stands for “Ground State Depletion Individual Molecule Return Microscopy.” The GSDIM technology is supported by the Federal Ministry for Education as part of the joint research project “GSDIM Widefield Nanoscopy.”

Dr. Stefan Hell succeeded in cracking the basic resolution limit of optical microscopes. Until now it wasn’t possible to distinguish two objects if the distance between them was smaller than 200 nanometers. This is due to the diffraction of light, which causes both objects to become blurred in the eye of the observer. Hell and the American researchers found ways to get around this limit and earned the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the development of super resolution fluorescence microscopy and the corresponding fluorescence dyes.

“Dr. Hell is one of the world’s leading microscopy experts. He is ambitious, full of humor and has wide-ranging interests. He’s really easy to work with,” said Fischer. Also participating in the joint project GSDIM Widefield Nanoscopy are the microscope manufacturer, Leica Microsystems GmbH from Mannheim and the producer of fast scientific cameras, PCO from Kelheim.

In the GSDIM joint project, Beiersdorf researcher Sonja Pagel-Wolff and Dr. Fischer, together with students Meike Halm and Robin Sieg, are investigating the smallest age-related structural changes within living skin cells and how these structures change when active ingredients are introduced into living cells.