Ana-Maria Zaske is the director of the Atomic force microscopy (AFM) core facility in the Internal Medicine Cardiology Division at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX. USA. Her laboratory has emerged as a key platform for studying the morphological and nanomechanical properties of living biological systems.
The mission of Ana-Maria’s AFM core facility is to explore all meaningful ways to assess experimental trials to mitigate diseases and facilitate advanced life science research. She explains that the investigation of nanomechanical properties, at the single-cell and single-molecule level, is already advancing the development of new targeted diagnostics and therapies. She has the ability to image, probe and manipulate biological systems to address the needs of scientific and medical investigations.
An area of major interest in her lab is to evaluate the effects of several physiological processes by measuring the elastic response on cells and tissues. She mentioned that the elasticity of the cell membrane can vary between cell types as a function of growth, differentiation, disease or treatment. She is able to evaluate the effects of a drug in cancer cells, analyse the efficiency of skin healing, or simply observe the changes in DNA structures, all at the nano-metric scale.
Additionally, her AFM facility can map the distribution of elastic responses on the sample surface by combining force curve measurements with topographical imaging. She emphasises that the unique properties of Atomic Force Microscopy offer unlimited applications in medical research. That this technology can provide valuable insights about the mechanisms of a disease and assess a successful treatment pathway for its cure.
Recent AFM-related papers:
Biography: Ana-Maria received her PhD from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, in the UK where she was first trained in high resolution Atomic Force Microscopy. She went back to her native country and used Atomic Force Microscopy to characterize membrane receptors in follicular cells, as Research Associated in the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology in the UNAM Mexico. In 2009 she was an award winner in recognition of her Scientific Excellence for presenting one of the 5 best posters at the “Seeing at the Nanoscale VII Conference” held in Santa Barbara CA by the VEECO company. She later joined UTHealth and became the director of the AFM core facility, as a part of the Internal Medicine Cardiology Division in Houston, TX. During the past 15 years, Dr. Zaske has gained relevant experience in the operation and applications of Atomic Force Microscopy to promote biomedical research.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-maria-zaske-phd-research-scientist-762aab52/