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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”.

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.

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.

Some hereditary genetic defects cause an exaggerated immune response that can be fatal. Using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool, such defects can be corrected, thus normalizing the immune response, as researchers led by Klaus Rajewsky from the Max Delbrück Center now report in “Science Immunology.”

The details of many immune defense mechanisms are still unknown, but a new study sheds light on one such mechanism. Writing in “The EMBO Journal”, researchers led by Oliver Daumke and Misha Kudryashev of the Max Delbrück Center describe exactly how GBP1 proteins render bacteria harmless by encapsulating them.

Big data, the opportunities of precision medicine, recent advances in organoid technology, and new developments in proteomics: Berlin's Senator for Higher Education and Research, Health and Long-Term Care, Ina Czyborra, visited the Max Delbrück Center in early January to learn about the latest developments in biomedicine.

A tumor often arises when cancer genes multiply. In this process, additional genes act as hitchhikers, potentially creating previously unknown vulnerabilities that open the door to new therapeutic approaches. This finding is reported by a team led by ECRC-scientists Anton Henssen and Jan Dörr in "Cancer Discovery."