News

With a grant of 600,000 euros, the Einstein Foundation Berlin is funding the preliminary module for an Einstein Center for Early Disease Interception. Ten Berlin institutions – including the Max Delbrück Center – are looking to develop, integrate and apply the technologies needed for precision medicine more quickly.

On August 1, 2023, Sofia Forslund will take up a W3 Professorship in Applied Microbiology at Charité. She will continue her scientific work at the ECRC, which involves close collaboration with researchers from the Max Delbrück Center and Charité.

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.

Prof. Maike Sander has been serving as the Scientific Director of the Max Delbrück Center since the end of 2022. A conversation with the internationally renowned stem cell and diabetes researcher about networks in science, the research metropolis Berlin and our center as a driver of innovation.

Multiple sclerosis progresses very differently and is therefore difficult to treat. Under the leadership of Charité, researchers at the ECRC and elsewhere are working on an online platform that predicts the course of the disease. The EU's Innovative Health Initiative is financing the project with 9,9 million euros.

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 intestine has a complex anatomical structure that includes “crypts.” Researchers led by Michael Sigal have now reconstructed these glands. In “Nature Communications”, they describe how the cells communicate with each other and how people with gut disorders could benefit from their findings.

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.

In June 2023, the Max Delbrück Center was awarded the “berufundfamilie” certificate for the fifth time – a sign of the center’s commitment to its employees. For “We at the MDC”, Petra Nibbe, head of People and Culture, explains how the institute intends to position itself as an attractive place to work.

Neuroblastoma is the third most common malignancy in children. 16 labs at the Max Delbrück Center and other Berlin-based researchers will investigate how they originate and grow in a new Collaborative Research Centre. The project, supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), has been granted approximately €13.5 million.