UFO Biosciences offers services to screen, identify, isolate and profile single cells to find truly meaningful genes. Using our FUNsice technology and based on the dynamic behaviour, molecular identity or imageable characteristics of your cells of interest, we help you in your search for new strategies to target exactly those cells that matter.
UFO was founded in 2021 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, built on the innovative FUNsice technology conceived in the Chien lab. Erasmus MC and Oncode Insitute joined forces to enable the launch of UFO Biosciences and make this key enabling technology widely available.
Miao-Ping Chien and Daan Brinks share a love for optics-based technologies, as well as the ambition to put their innovations to use towards resolving key knowledge gaps in our current understanding of human biology. Miao and Daan founded UFO Biosciences to help all players in this global quest, with the ultimate aim to drive improvement of diagnostic and treatment strategies for cancer patients.
Miao has dedicated her education and scientific career to generating an exclusive knowledge base and skilset enabling her to address key question in oncology research from a unique angle. Born an raised in Taiwan, where she studied Molecular Biology at the National Yang-Ming University, she moved on to obtain her PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Universtiy of California San Diego. She then progressed to Harvard University for postdoctoral research focusing on technology development, after which she landed her own research line as prinicpal investigator at Erasmus MC. Here, she uses her multipdisciplinary approach to the development of innovative microscopy-based single cell technologies, and employ these to further our knowledge in cancer research.
Daan commenced his scientific career at Twente University, where he studied Applied Physics, followed by his PhD studies in Molecular Nanophotonics at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona. He then performed his post-doctoral studies at Harvard University, where combined his expertise in both optical and genetic engineering to resolve neural dynamics with high special and temporal resolution. Daan currently leads his research group in Imaging Physics at Delft University in Technology, and Erasmus MC, aiming to address key biological questions through functional imaging, with a keen interest in developing innovative tools with roots in physics, biochemistry, optics, mathematics and nanofabrication.