Herbert Stepp earned his physics degree in 1984 with “Doppler-free two-photon spectroscopy”, then changed to medical laser applications and finalized his PhD-thesis at the medical faculty of the University of Munich.
Main area of interest can be described as "clinical biophotonics". Driven by the vision of an exhaustive tissue characterization by optical methods, fluorescence diagnosis, confocal and two-photon endoscopy and optical coherence tomography have been investigated in different stages of development. Most experience has been obtained with sensitizer fluorescence, first using hematoporphyrin and later aminolevulinic acid (ALA) to stain (pre)malignant lesions in bladder, oral cavity, cervix and brain. Clinical approvals have been obtained in Europe for fluorescence imaging of bladder cancer and brain tumors (malignant glioma), based on methods and instrumentation established in the research group of Herbert Stepp.
Apart from the diagnostic potential of ALA, its therapeutic application was studied. Close collaboration both with clinicians and with the industry is seen as a key element to bring these developments from the bench to the bedside. Recently, research on two-photon-endoscopy has been started and the application of OCT-instrumentation was introduced in clinical studies.