News

Boosting the immune system with kefir grains, developing smart road models and writing a program for chemical reactions: the winners of the 56th regional contest at Campus Berlin-Buch impressed the judges with their complete dedication and imaginative projects.

A year ago, BIH, MDC and Charité launched the joint research focus "Single Cell Approaches for Personalised Medicine". Its aim is to use innovative single cell technologies to answer clinical questions. This aspiration will be put into practice by four new junior research groups, which have now started.

On January 1, 2021, the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH ) has become the translational research unit of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and will then form – alongside the hospital and the medical faculty – Charité’s third pillar.

When virologists become reality TV stars, biologists dream of life without illness, researchers debate organoids vs. animal testing with the general public, and biomedical scientists discuss the possibilities of AI, it can only be Berlin Science Week. This year, the MDC is holding a number of virtual events.

Berlin will become one of four new National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) locations in addition to Heidelberg and Dresden. This was announced today by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, recognizing the outstanding achievements of Charité, the BIH and the MDC in advancing cancer treatment and research.

The board of the Einstein Foundation approved the preliminary stage of a new Einstein Center for the development of alternative methods for animal testing in biomedical research. The aim of the planned center is to reduce or replace animal experiments. It will be established in cooperation with the MDC.

MDC researcher Jan Philipp Junker and his collaborator Maria Colomé-Tatché at Helmholtz Center Munich have received a €200,000 grant to improve big data processing to better understand how gene networks are wired together during development and disease.

Genome researchers have come together to launch the German COVID-19 OMICS Initiative (DeCOI). DeCOI combines the expertise of more than 22 institutions from across Germany to make a scientific contribution to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The LabHive digital platform aims to provide necessary resources to diagnostic centres to enable more tests for SARS-CoV-2. Tobias Opialla from the MDC is one of 15 volunteers who has been involved in the project since the #WirvsVirus Hackathon organized by the German government.

Thomas Blankenstein receives an ERC Advanced grant for cancer research. The scientist wants to find out if T cells control the development of cancer by a process called immunosurveillance. For this purpose he now proposes a new research model.