News

Certain immune system cells are able to make tumors especially visible to the body’s own defenses – if only cancer cells didn’t prevent them from doing so. Researchers, including those from the MDC and ECRC, have now published a joint article in PNAS explaining how tumors block the immune cells in their immediate environment.

Researchers from three continents have produced a first extensive draft of a cell atlas of the human heart to understand how this vital organ functions and to shed light on what goes wrong in cardiovascular disease. As the team reports in Nature, it reveals a huge cellular and molecular diversity.

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.

A serious illness is often the result of a single genetic defect. To help locate this genetic “needle in a haystack” scientists at the Bioinformatics Core Unit of the BIH joined forces with colleagues from Charité and the MDC to develop a freely available software. They are presenting it in the journal “Nucleic Acids Research”.

A new team at the MDC will support researchers with the management of scientific data. In addition to technical solutions and uniform standards for storing, analyzing, and describing data, training and consulting services for scientists are also planned.

How does cancer develop and how does it progress? Dr. Anton Henssen from the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC) wants to find out more about circular DNA in order to use its cancer cell-specific characteristics for therapy, diagnosis or clinical prognosis. He has now been awarded an ERC Starting Grant.

A new algorithmic approach reveals individual tumors continue to evolve and remodel their genomes, and this occurs across a broad range of tumor types. Identifying changes that benefit tumors and help them metastasize could help with future treatments. Results are published in Nature.

Dr. Rafael Dominguez Acemel explores the question of what factors determine sex during the embryonic development of animals. The MDC researcher has now been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

Is it possible to grow organs in a petri dish? How does CRISPR gene editing work? What happens at the cellular level when SARS-CoV-2 infects the body? Our new online further education format “Lab meets teacher – digital!” enables teachers to gain an in-depth understanding of current research issues like these.

The 11th annual Ultrahigh Field Magnetic Resonance (UHF-MR) Symposium will take place Sept. 3 and 4, streaming live from the MDC. Organizers are welcoming the opportunity to bring more researchers from around the world together virtually.