News

It’s been a bit of a mystery: is a particular family of proteins responsible for cell survival or cell death in the intestinal lining? A new mouse model developed at the Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine (MDC) provides clear evidence and a potential treatment target for inflammatory bowel disease.

Anton Henssen works as a paediatrician and researches rare tumours at the Max Delbrück Center. Incidentally, he’s also a conceptual artist with way more to his paintings than meets the eye.

LabHive is one of 1,500 projects born out of the federal government’s #WirVsVirus hackathon. Team leader Dr. Tobias Opialla of the MDC presents the new online platform, which is intended to bundle laboratory capacity and enable more SARS-CoV-2 tests.

Jan Philipp Junker creates cell lineage trees. He wants to understand the different paths that lead to a functioning organism. Perhaps one day, this knowledge will also reveal how organs are able to regenerate.

The LabHive digital platform aims to provide necessary resources to diagnostic centres to enable more tests for SARS-CoV-2. Tobias Opialla from the MDC is one of 15 volunteers who has been involved in the project since the #WirvsVirus Hackathon organized by the German government.

Staying in the background and not calling attention to themselves – that has long been part of everyday life for technical assistants at the MDC. In April 2019 they formed a group to represent their interests. In an interview for the “We at the MDC” series, three of the TA Representatives discuss their achievements so far and what they plan to do next.

Strategies for treating multiple sclerosis have so far focused primarily on T and B cells. A group of MDC researchers has now unveiled a new approach in Nature Immunology – one that seeks to increase treatment effectiveness by selectively targeting another type of immune cell called monocytes.

Thomas Blankenstein receives an ERC Advanced grant for cancer research. The scientist wants to find out if T cells control the development of cancer by a process called immunosurveillance. For this purpose he now proposes a new research model.

Researchers at the MDC observe the very early stages of blood vessel development in lymph node tumors. The findings published in Cancer Research suggest a potential treatment target to slow lymphoma tumor growth.

Markus Landthaler is in charge of the Corona Task Force at the MDC that bundles resources for SARS-CoV-2 research projects. In this interview he explains how several research groups are working together in minimal operation for a better understanding of corona viruses.