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Neuroscientists Gary Lewin and James Poulet at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine have won highly coveted and competitive ERC Advanced Grants to study pain and the neural mechanisms that underlie temperature perception.

Touch is a fundamental, yet scarcely understood, sense. Now, the team led by Gary Lewin at the Max Delbrück Center has discovered a second ion channel associated with touch perception. Elkin1 could be a target for pain therapy, the team writes in “Science”.

Special receptor cells under the skin enable us to feel pain and touch. But Schwann cells also play a key role in detecting such stimuli, researchers at the Max Delbrück Center report in “Nature Communications.” This discovery opens new avenues for pain therapy.

Melissa Birol of the Max Delbrück Center is looking to understand early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Her focus is on the interplay between the lipid metabolism of nerve cells and the spread of tau protein. The Alzheimer Research Initiative is funding her work with 193,500 euros.

In neuromuscular diseases, neurons and muscle cells stop communicating properly. Researchers led by Mina Gouti can now model this in 2D in a culture dish. Writing about their findings in “Nature Communications”, they say the new model promises to revolutionize high-throughput drug screening studies.

At the Max Delbrück Center, Cheryl L. Stucky learned the techniques for studying pain receptors that she now teaches to young scientists as a professor in the USA. On November 8, the alumna will visit her former workplace and give a talk on how skin cells contribute to the sensations of touch and pain.

People with Huntington’s disease lose control of their bodies and minds. The symptoms are caused by protein clumps in the nerve cells. Supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, Andrea Quezada aims to create atomic models of these fibrils at the Max Delbrück Center.

Behavior can be observed in the brain. Swedish neuroscientist Hanna Hörnberg looks for the molecular and cellular changes that occur in the nerve cells of people with depression or neurodevelopmental conditions – and hopes to create new basic knowledge that can help diagnosis and guide support needs.

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”.

RNA molecules travel long distances through nerve cells. To reach their destination, they need one thing more than any other – a long life – as a research team led by Marina Chekulaeva from MDC-BIMSB reports in the journal “Molecular Cell.”