Press Releases

Every year, some 510,000 people in Germany are diagnosed with cancer – and there are over four million people in the country today living with a cancer diagnosis. On the occasion of World Cancer Day on February 4, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) is giving media representatives an opportunity to hear from experts on the current state of cancer research.

MDC researchers have developed a new approach to CAR T-cell therapy. The team has shown in Nature Communications that the procedure is very effective, especially when it comes to fighting follicular lymphomas and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common type of blood cancer in adults.

On January 1, 2021, the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH ) has become the translational research unit of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and will then form – alongside the hospital and the medical faculty – Charité’s third pillar.

The Berlin biotech start-up T-knife, a spin-off from the MDC together with Charité, has secured investments totaling €66 million. Four venture capital funds committed to the financing in early August. T-knife develops new cancer treatments using modified immune system T cells.

The board of the Einstein Foundation approved the preliminary stage of a new Einstein Center for the development of alternative methods for animal testing in biomedical research. The aim of the planned center is to reduce or replace animal experiments. It will be established in cooperation with the MDC.

Setting out to identify all proteins that make up the sarcomere, the basic contractile unit of muscle cells, resulted in an unexpected revelation, providing experimental evidence that helps explain a fundamental mystery about how muscles work. The research was published in Nature Communications.

The LabHive digital platform aims to provide necessary resources to diagnostic centres to enable more tests for SARS-CoV-2. Tobias Opialla from the MDC is one of 15 volunteers who has been involved in the project since the #WirvsVirus Hackathon organized by the German government.

Strategies for treating multiple sclerosis have so far focused primarily on T and B cells. A group of MDC researchers has now unveiled a new approach in Nature Immunology – one that seeks to increase treatment effectiveness by selectively targeting another type of immune cell called monocytes.

A new diagnostic test to quickly and easily monitor kidney transplant patients for infection and rejection relies on a simple urine sample and a powerful partner: the gene-editing technology CRISPR. Michael Kaminski, who developed it, leads a new Emmy Noether Group at the MDC & Charité.