News

HI-TAC’s co-leadership team is complete: Johannes Backs, a physician, is now serving as scientific director of the Helmholtz Institute – alongside Karina Yaniv. Backs studies how the heart communicates with other organs and aims to bring new drugs to patients more quickly.

The Oliver Daumke lab and researchers at Freie Universität Berlin have revealed how a protein complex guards the entrance to channels in mitochondrial membranes called cristae. The work, published in “Nature Communications,” provides a blueprint for modeling human proteins in action.

The European doctoral network ORFeus is welcoming applications from doctoral students who want to help decipher the dark proteome. The Max Delbrück Center will host one student in the lab of Uwe Ohler. The deadline for applying is October 22, 2026.

A team headed by Michael Sigal’s lab has revealed how Helicobacter pylori reprograms the stomach lining at the cellular level, allowing cancer to develop. The findings, published “Nature Communications,” pave the way toward prevention.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the Kudryashev lab has revealed how muscle cell calcium channels open synchronously. The findings, published in “Nature Communications,” may explain a mechanism behind serious muscle diseases.

An international team has created a detailed molecular map of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, one of the most common forms of heart disease. Their findings, published in “Science Translational Medicine,” identify biological pathways that could pave the way for more precise treatments.

Invaginations of the cell membrane called caveolae protect cells from mechanical stress, allow nutrients to enter the cell, and serve as signaling hubs. The teams of Oliver Daumke and Misha Kudryashev now describe in “Nature Communications” the structure of a protein chain that stabilizes caveolae.

Klaus Rajewsky is among this year’s winners of Emory University's Max Cooper Prize in Immunology, which recognizes scientists for their “transformative and revolutionary achievements.” The three winners will be formally honored on Sept. 29, 2026, with a $100,000 prize to be shared equally.

Since August 2026, Stefanie Seltmann has headed our new Data, Information and Publication Services department. In this interview, she explains what her team does and why our researchers, and science as a whole, stand to benefit.

The Simon Haas lab and researchers from Heidelberg Faculty of Medicine at Heidelberg University have identified a subgroup of CAR T cells that plays a key role in the success of low-dose therapies and that could potentially serve as a biomarker. The findings are published in “Nature Communications.”