News

Neuroscientists Gary Lewin and James Poulet at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine have won highly coveted and competitive ERC Advanced Grants to study pain and the neural mechanisms that underlie temperature perception.

He is a molecular biologist and physician, a GDR civil rights activist and bioethicist, a person with integrity and a sense of community. Until 2022, he was an ombudsman at the Max Delbrück Center. We celebrate the 85th birthday of Professor Jens Reich.

Their research is outstanding, and they’re also committed to the Max Delbrück Center and engaged in our community — Manqiang Lin and Artsemi Yushkevich wrote the best papers in 2023; Hendrik Bartolomaeus, Eleonore Adami and Ulrike Löber received the Postdoc Awards for 2023.

Touch is a fundamental, yet scarcely understood, sense. Now, the team led by Gary Lewin at the Max Delbrück Center has discovered a second ion channel associated with touch perception. Elkin1 could be a target for pain therapy, the team writes in “Science”.

At a workshop organized by EARA, researchers, animal welfare officers, and communicators gained insights into how they can communicate more openly and proactively about animal research. The event, with over 80 participants, was held in collaboration with the Max Delbrück Center.

The artists Elisabetta Citterio and Claudia Cagliano have created portraits of nearly 60 female researchers from nine countries. Twenty-five of them can be viewed in the "STEM Passion" exhibition until March 12, 2024 in the Rahel Hirsch Center for Translational Medicine Berlin.

Special receptor cells under the skin enable us to feel pain and touch. But Schwann cells also play a key role in detecting such stimuli, researchers at the Max Delbrück Center report in “Nature Communications.” This discovery opens new avenues for pain therapy.

Melissa Birol of the Max Delbrück Center is looking to understand early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Her focus is on the interplay between the lipid metabolism of nerve cells and the spread of tau protein. The Alzheimer Research Initiative is funding her work with 193,500 euros.

On January 29th, the European Animal Research Association (EARA) and Charité –Universitätsmedizin Berlin, in collaboration with the Max Delbrück Center and Freie Universität Berlin, invite those working in the life science sector to discuss the need for greater transparency in animal research.