News

Biochemist and physician Leif S. Ludwig of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) and the Max Delbrück Center has been named a recipient of the 2023 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, as the German Research Foundation (DFG) announced on June 27th.

Two science communications projects of the Max Delbrück Center have received funding from the Stiftung Charité. About 100,000 Euro will go to Gary Lewin and illustrator Kat Menschik for a book on unusual animals in research, and to Russ Hodge and Jennifer von Schlichting for a board game on gene expression.

MyoPax develops regenerative therapies for previously incurable muscle diseases. An interview with co-founders Prof. Simone Spuler and Dr. Verena Schöwel-Wolf, now board member and CEO respectively

Muscle cells are very good at repairing damage. But if this fails, stem cells step in to regenerate the tissue. Carmen Birchmeier investigates the molecular signaling pathways that underlie these and other vital mechanisms.

Leif S. Ludwig, a researcher at the Max Delbrück Center and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), will receive the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Young Investigator Award 2023 for a new method to analyze the formation of blood cells, as the Scientific Council of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation announced today.

The UK’s Physiological Society has named Gary Lewin an Honorary Fellow. Two Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine also received the distinction. It is the highest honor that the tradition-rich society presents to an individual.

To save the northern white rhinoceros from extinction, the BioRescue team is racing to create lab-grown egg and sperm cells of the critically endangered subspecies. The team has now reported a milestone in “Science Advances”: they have generated primordial germ cells from stem cells – a world’s first.

On November 1, 2022, Professor Maike Sander took over as Scientific Director of the Max Delbrück Center. The diabetes researcher succeeds Professor Thomas Sommer, who had directed the Center on an interim basis since 2019.

They have their sights set on serious diseases: Gabriele G. Schiattarella analyzes mechanisms of heart failure, Simon Haas wants to improve immunotherapies for leukemia and Michael Sigal would like to prevent gastrointestinal diseases. Now, the ERC is awarding the researchers with a Starting Grant.

Malaysia’s last male Sumatran rhino, Kertam, died in 2019. Now, a team from the Max Delbrück Center has successfully grown stem cells and mini-brains from his skin cells. As they report in "iScience", their goal is to create sperm cells that may help to save the endangered species from extinction.