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.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) will fund single-cell scientist Simon Haas in its Heisenberg program. Therefore, the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) is establishing a Heisenberg professorship in systems hematology. After five years, the BIH will make the professorship permanent.

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”.

During three campaigns in December 2023, employees of the Max Delbrück Center took the opportunity to donate to good causes. This resulted in more than 300 gifts for children and more than 1,400 euros for the 'Kältebus' (cold bus) for homeless people in Berlin. We spoke with the organizers.

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.

A new computer program allows scientists to design synthetic DNA segments that indicate, in real time, the state of cells. Reported by the Gargiulo lab in “Nature Communications”, it will be used to screen for anti-cancer or viral infections drugs, or to improve gene and cell-based immunotherapies.

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.