News

The Max Delbrück Center will host its first-ever Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Week, from November 13 to 17, 2023. The event will foster engagement, support, and unity of its research community, and will feature workshops, panel discussions, and community activities at its Buch and Mitte locations.

Cancer cells are capable of escaping chemotherapy and radiotherapy by activating a signaling pathway that prevents them from dying. Researchers led by Claus Scheidereit at the Max Delbrück Center have now described in Cell Chemical Biology two new compounds that block this escape route.

The stem cell therapy developed by MyoPax, a spin-off from the Max Delbrück Center and Charité, could soon be helping children with previously incurable muscle diseases thanks to an accelerated approval process. The necessary clinical trial will start in the fall.

For one night only, the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin-Buch and the MDC-BIMSB in Mitte will open their doors to the interested public: On June 17th, 2023, visitors can tour laboratories, perform hands-on experiments, and explore connections between art and science. Here are some of the highlights.

Regulatory T cells ensure that immune responses happen in a controlled way. But eating too much salt weakens these cells’ energy supply, thus rendering them dysfunctional for a while. This may have implications for autoimmunity, an international team – including Dominik Müller – reports in “Cell Metabolism.”

Organoids have to be fed and cared for continuously so that they can mature. So far, it is mostly a manual process – not suitable for industrial drug screening. Now, the European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Mina Gouti a Proof of Concept Grant to tackle scalability and reproducibility.

MyoPax, a new spin-off of the Max Delbrück Center and Charité, receives a 1.3 million euros loan to jump-start its entrepreneurial activities. The start-up develops regenerative therapies for previously incurable muscle diseases using its innovative muscle stem cell technology.

Shortly before Berlin’s Christopher Street Day, the MDC will hold a Pride Symposium for the first time. On July 22, 2022, everyone is welcome to exchange ideas about queer issues in life sciences and health care.

There’s likely to be a fundamental difference between how a medical practicioner and an artist view genetic editing with CRISPR. But both perspectives reveal possible ways to shape life in nature. Science meets art: the Max Delbrück Center at the Salon Sophie Charlotte 2022 in Berlin.

Mutations that lead to muscle atrophy can be repaired with the gene editor CRISPR-Cas9. A team led by ECRC researcher Helena Escobar has now introduced the tool into human muscle stem cells for the first time using mRNA, thus discovering a method suitable for therapeutic applications.