News

After spending many years researching together, a group of scientists has founded CARTemis Therapeutics, a spin-off from the Max Delbrück Center. Uta Höpken, Armin Rehm, Anthea Wirges, and Mario Bunse want to use novel CAR T-cell therapies to help patients with cancers that are currently untreatable.

Whether aggressive cancer cells can spread unchecked depends, to no small degree, on their cellular neighborhood. Fabian Coscia wants to analyze exactly what happens at the proteome level during this interaction. He has now been selected for a €1 million-plus grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to pursue this research.

Internationally renowned for pioneering achievements and geared to inter-institutional cooperation: 22 research groups at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology in the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB) explore how genes regulate life. It is now celebrating its 15th birthday.

The Max Delbrück Center has revised its guidelines for good scientific practice. Based on these guidelines, the institute commits its scientists to integrity and honesty in their research, exemplary leadership and training, as well as proper attribution of intellectual property.

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.

An international research team, including Achim Leutz of the Max Delbrück Center, has discovered that a specific protein controls the conversion of immune cells. If it were possible to intervene in this process, the development of cancer could be prevented.

The Max Delbrück Center in Berlin and Heidelberg University will found a new Helmholtz Institute for Translational AngioCardioScience (HI-TAC) in Mannheim and Heidelberg. The Helmholtz Senate voted in favor of the institute, which will integrate vascular biomedicine, systems biology and heart research.

While CAR-T cells have proven successful in treating certain types of leukemia and lymphoma, these immunotherapies can become even more effective. A clinical trial run by Charité and the Max Delbrück Center has been awarded a grant of several million euros to test a new approach.

Sometimes a tumor suddenly starts growing rapidly or becomes resistant to cancerdrugs. This can be caused by a cancer gene “striking out on its own” in ring shapes. ECRC-scientist Anton Henssen described how these DNA rings arise and continue to develop in the journal “Nature Genetics”.

A team of scientists led by Martin Janz and Klaus Rajewsky at the Max Delbrück Center has successfully generated genetically defined mouse models for two subtypes of multiple myeloma. These models will contribute to a better understanding of how the disease develops in humans. The team has now published their findings in the journal PNAS.