The European Union is under increasing pressure on its borders due to a rapidly evolving international landscape. It is imperative to enhance EU preparedness against:
- the complex and dynamic market for illicit drugs
- the escalating illicit chemical substance trade such as explosives
- the risk of bio-threats, e.g. the spread of viruses, bacteria or toxins that can occur naturally or can be intentionally introduced causing harm to humans, animals, plants, or their shared environment.
Cutting edge equipment in the JRC Nanobiotechnology laboratory.
JRC Nanobiotechnology Laboratory
To address these challenges, the JRC Nanobiotechnology Laboratory provides support to the development of innovative technologies and solutions for the detection of airborne pathogens and other particulate threats.
Our laboratory offers:
- A state-of-the-art, high-end laboratory with orthogonal analytical technologies, including physical-chemical analysis and advanced imaging techniques, providing a unique combination of facilities.
- A proven agility in adapting to emerging and multidisciplinary analytical demands (e.g. nanomaterials, micro(nano)plastics, nanomedicines, and pathogens) demonstrating its ability to quickly respond to new challenges.
- A multidisciplinary experience gained as an EU research infrastructure by performing more than 60 Open Access projects in collaboration with research institutions from 23 countries.
Projects in the health security area
Our going projects in the area of health security include the development of new solutions for:
- Near Real Time detection of pathogen viral families in indoors by using advanced optical methods
- The detection of illicit chemical traces such as drugs and explosives by advanced sensing platform coupled with advanced techniques such as Raman spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and advanced surface analysis cluster (Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS)).