Press Releases

Whether aggressive cancer cells can spread unchecked depends, to no small degree, on their cellular neighborhood. Fabian Coscia wants to analyze exactly what happens at the proteome level during this interaction. He has now been selected for a €1 million-plus grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to pursue this research.

Internationally renowned for pioneering achievements and geared to inter-institutional cooperation: 22 research groups at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology in the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB) explore how genes regulate life. It is now celebrating its 15th birthday.

The Max Delbrück Center has revised its guidelines for good scientific practice. Based on these guidelines, the institute commits its scientists to integrity and honesty in their research, exemplary leadership and training, as well as proper attribution of intellectual property.

Bartter syndrome type 3 is the result of several structural variants in the genome. By using long-read sequencing, Janine Altmüller and her team from the Max Delbrück Center, the BIH and University Hospital Cologne mapped out the rare disease in unprecedented detail. They have now reported their findings in “Genome Medicine.”

Many people with post-COVID syndrome who suffer from fatigue six months after a coronavirus infection are still severely physically impaired up to 20 months afterward. The study by ECRC researcher Judith Bellmann-Strobl and her colleagues was published in “eClinicalMedicine.”

Cancer cells are capable of escaping chemotherapy and radiotherapy by activating a signaling pathway that prevents them from dying. Researchers led by Claus Scheidereit at the Max Delbrück Center have now described in Cell Chemical Biology two new compounds that block this escape route.

The stem cell therapy developed by MyoPax, a spin-off from the Max Delbrück Center and Charité, could soon be helping children with previously incurable muscle diseases thanks to an accelerated approval process. The necessary clinical trial will start in the fall.

Researchers at BIH and the Max Delbrück Center have developed a new approach for vaccines against coronaviruses using modified spike proteins with lower binding affinity. This method could make vaccinations more effective, the team writes in the "European Journal of Immunology".

The Arl8b protein provides new insights into the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease. It also has the potential to function as a diagnostic marker. The scientists behind this discovery, a team led by Erich Wanker from the Max Delbrück Center, have published their findings in “Genome Medicine”.

British and German scientists created the most comprehensive cell atlas of the human heart. As reported in the journal “Nature”, it is the first to include the cells from which the heartbeat originates. Among other things, this data will provide a reference for studies on cardiac arrhythmias.