Press Releases

Anton Henssen of the ECRC has been awarded the Kind Philipp Award for Pediatric Oncology Research for his study of ring-shaped DNA and its significance in the development of childhood neuroblastoma. A publication in the scientific journal Nature Genetics was decisive for this award.

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.

Genome researchers have come together to launch the German COVID-19 OMICS Initiative (DeCOI). DeCOI combines the expertise of more than 22 institutions from across Germany to make a scientific contribution to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

Researchers at the MDC have developed a new online tool that displays the development of the COVID-19 epidemic in Germany clearly and by individual state as well as worldwide. The map and timeline showing the spread of the coronavirus are freely available on the internet.

The Käthe-Beutler-Haus of the BIH is currently being built on the Berlin-Buch campus - the Medizinhistorische Journal now reports on the life of the Jewish paediatrician, researcher and mother.

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.

The MDC is committed to maintaining respectful interactions at the research center and is taking decisive action to prevent and address bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment. Since early 2019 an Anti-Harassment Task Force, consisting of a broad cross-section of stakeholders, has been preparing guidelines for this very purpose. The Board of Directors has declared its support for the proposed guidelines.