News

Bone regeneration, dynamic hydrogels and the novel coronavirus – these three topics are currently being researched by MDC scientists in two new Collaborative Research Centres and as part of the COVID-19 Focus Funding initiative of the German Research Foundation (DFG ).

The 13th Berlin Summer Meeting “Rising from the Ashes – Regeneration at the Single Cell Level” will take place as a Christmas Special on Dec. 10-11, 2020. The free, virtual conference will feature talks about regeneration research in animals and organoids.

MDC researcher Jan Philipp Junker and his collaborator Maria Colomé-Tatché at Helmholtz Center Munich have received a €200,000 grant to improve big data processing to better understand how gene networks are wired together during development and disease.

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.

MDC researchers established a new model to study neuromuscular development and disorders. For the first time two distinct human tissues co-developed in the lab from one progenitor cell type and self-organized into a complex, functional neuromuscular organoid.

Some 27 young researchers have been selected for the prestigious EMBO Young Investigators Programme. Among this year’s awardees is Philipp Junker, a systems biologist at the MDC’s Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology.

When a muscle grows or a muscle injury heals, some of the stem cells develop into new muscle cells. A research team at the MDC led by Carmen Birchmeier has now described in the journal “Genes and Development” how this process is regulated by two proteins produced in an oscillatory manner.

Switching off “safeguard” genes improves cell reprogramming, aiding future regenerative therapies.

The conference “Muscle Development, Regeneration and Disease 2018” took place at the MDC in late April. This event has in recent years become an increasingly important international platform for muscle research.

MDC researchers have described how the heart forms itself into a its characteristic S-shape and how the ventricles and atria finally develop. Their findings will help to better understand congenital heart diseases.