The winners of the Fraunhofer 'Technology for People' award tackled the tricky question of how to change the inside of a bag without opening it: The Braunschweig research team uses a plasma to activate the inner surfaces of plastic bags. On the one hand, the plasma has a disinfecting effect, and on the other, it changes the surface of the bag so that cells can grow on it. The aim was to develop a closed system in which cells can grow undisturbed without being contaminated. The background to this is the idea of treating diseases with the patient's own stem cells. Until now, researchers have used Petri dishes, bottles or bioreactors in as sterile an environment as possible. However, these systems have to be opened to refill culture media or extract cells, which can lead to contamination.

The picture shows, from left to right, Henk Garritsen (Braunschweig Municipal Hospital), Werner Lindenmaier (Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research), Michael Thomas, Kristina Lachmann (both from the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films) and Kurt Dittmar (Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research).