Dr. rer. nat. Rudolf J. Schneider

In his working group „Immunochemical Methods“ at BAM everything spins around antibodies

Rudolf Schneider (born in 1963) studied chemistry at the Technical University Munich. By chance, while looking for an interesting topic for his diploma thesis, he stumbled into his present working area: immunoassays. At that time these methods, established in clinical diagnostics and biochemical research, were applied for residue analysis of pesticides.

After finishing his PhD he moved on to the University of Bonn, where in 2004 he was appointed lecturer in agroecology/environmental chemistry. Postdoctoral research and a short-time lectureship from DAAD took him to the USA and Portugal. In 2006 he joined the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), Department of Analytical Chemistry, Reference Materials, in Berlin-Adlershof.

His research focus

In his working group „Immunochemical Methods“ everything spins around antibodies. These Y-shaped proteins introduce the high selectivity into his analytical method developments. As shown in the picture for caffeine, the substance to analyze (analyte) has to be transformed into a suitable derivate (hapten) and coupled to carrier proteins. The thoroughly characterized conjugates are then used for immunization of mice at partners’ premises. Those produce hybridoma cells which are selected based on their ability to produce highly selective high-affinity antibodies (clone screening). With the antibodies rapid biochemical tests (“ELISA”, see schematic) on microplates (to the very right in the figure) and immunoaffinity materials for the simple purification of sample extracts are designed.

Rudolf Schneider sees himself and his co-workers at BAM especially as contact persons for researchers and developers in a sense of forming a “competence center immunoassay”.

Contact: Dr. Rudolf Schneider, e-mail, tel. : +49-(0)30-8104-1151, www.bam.de