News & Events

Researchers from three continents have produced a first extensive draft of a cell atlas of the human heart to understand how this vital organ functions and to shed light on what goes wrong in cardiovascular disease. As the team reports in Nature, it reveals a huge cellular and molecular diversity.

Berlin will become one of four new National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) locations in addition to Heidelberg and Dresden. This was announced today by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, recognizing the outstanding achievements of Charité, the BIH and the MDC in advancing cancer treatment and research.

For the sixth time, the MDC has granted awards to its “silent heroes.” This year’s recipients are committed staff members whose hard work out of the public eye makes a significant contribution to the smooth running of the research conducted at the MDC.

Berlin has a long tradition as a medical metropolis and also the potential to become an international hub for the life sciences, comparable to Boston. On September 28, researchers from both cities will discuss this issue with the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller.

Alzheimer’s is linked to metabolic dysfunction. Thomas Willnow is looking for disruptions in the balance of fats in the brain that accelerate the breakdown of neurons – and has discovered important risk factors that offer new therapeutic approaches for treating Alzheimer’s at an early stage.

In July 2020, Dr. Michael Hinz became the MDC’s first Sustainability Officer. In an interview for the “We at the MDC” series, he describes his vision of a sustainable MDC – and a sustainable campus.

James L. Kirkland is not working to eliminate aging altogether, but rather seeks to alleviate or end age-related diseases. The director of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, gave a virtual lecture on September 21 at the MDC.

A serious illness is often the result of a single genetic defect. To help locate this genetic “needle in a haystack” scientists at the Bioinformatics Core Unit of the BIH joined forces with colleagues from Charité and the MDC to develop a freely available software. They are presenting it in the journal “Nucleic Acids Research”.

Hundreds of researchers, clinicians, industry leaders and policy makers from all around Europe are united by a vision of how to revolutionize healthcare. In a perspective in Nature and the LifeTime Strategic Research Agenda they now present a roadmap of how to leverage the latest scientific breakthroughs and technologies over the next decade, to track, understand and treat human cells throughout an individual’s lifetime.