Science

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.

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.

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.

The Long Night of the Sciences has been a Berlin tradition for 25 years – and the Max Delbrück Center and Campus Berlin-Buch have been part of it from the very beginning. On June 28, we celebrated this milestone with science enthusiasts, families, and special guests.

Helmholtz Imaging once again selected many outstanding scientific images during its annual contest: The Max Delbrück Center came out on top twice in the Best Scientific Image Contest, with Jana Kroll winning the Jury Award and Rafael Deliz Aguirre taking the Public Choice Award.

The ion channel PIEZO2 doesn’t just convey touch stimuli. It also plays a key role in the development of coronary vessels, a team led by Annette Hammes from the Max Delbrück Center reports in “Nature Cardiovascular Research.” The findings could improve our understanding of congenital heart defects.

Paula Leupold is a PhD student in Nikolaus Rajewsky's lab. She studies how the environment, like viruses and microplastic, can infiltrate the human brain and cause cellular changes or disease. Her reading recommendation tells a true story from Malawi — one of the poorest countries in the world.

The Helmholtz Association has approved €30.8 million in funding for the Center for AI–Accelerated Molecular Innovations in Medicine to be located at the Max Delbrück Center. Researchers will use new technologies to develop AI-driven strategies for precision treatment and prevention.

European research organizations, led by Coimbra Group, EU-LIFE and YERUN, have issued a joint statement calling on the European Commission and Member States to preserve the bottom-up structure of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).