Max Delbrück Center

On July 4, Max Delbrück Center doctoral students gathered with supervisors, colleagues, friends, and family to celebrate their graduation, a milestone that was years in the making. Graduate Anita Waltho recounts her experience of the event, which brought together a community.

The first VC Day at the Max Delbrück Center brought together our budding entrepreneurs with the CLIC incubator and top venture capital working in Berlin biotechnology for a day of pitching, exchange and networking.

Lab tours, lively talks, music and awards – Summer Science Day 2025 brought the Max Delbrück Center community together like never before. In addition to food and games, this year's new format created space to spark dialogue across our diverse teams.

Starting in 2027, Captain T Cell – a Max Delbrück Center biotech spin-off – will begin the first clinical trial of its TCR-T cell therapy. This has been made possible through funding from the National Center for Tumor Diseases and close collaboration with Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Thoralf Niendorf at the Max Delbrück Center has won a Proof of Concept Grant from the European Research Council to study the use of heat generated during MRI scans to selectively destroy brain tumors. The method could pose significantly fewer risks than laser ablation or surgery.

Professor Michael Gotthardt is developing a therapy for a common yet currently untreatable form of heart disease. The Deutsche Zentrum für Herz-Kreislauf-Forschung is supporting the project with around €650,000, which he will share with collaborator Dr. Alessio Alogna from the Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité.

Clara Vázquez García has won a Helmholtz Doctoral Award and a Helmholtz Enterprises Field Study Fellowship. She plans to use the funding to further develop a tool that can assess a person’s DNA repair and immune system fitness.

Molecular machines carry out many vital processes inside our cells. When their components – protein building blocks – are faulty, it can lead to disease. Structural biologist Oliver Daumke investigates how these machines are built, what makes them work, and what goes wrong when they malfunction.

From reducing freezer usage to plastic waste, Max Delbrück Center labs have been implementing strategies from the LEAF program for sustainable research. As more labs join the program, they are not only contributing to reaching our sustainability goals, they are also improving research quality.