Imaging

Foundation models are complex AI applications with enormous potential. Trained on vast datasets from medicine, climate, or material science, they can uncover new relationships and make predictions. Helmholtz is supporting this pioneering work, with €5.55 million going to the Max Delbrück Center.

In mid-September, researchers from all over the world gathered in Berlin to explore the current and future possibilities of magnetic resonance imaging. The annual symposium was hosted by the team of physicist Professor Thoralf Niendorf from the Max Delbrück Center.

The Max Delbrück Center, Berlin, celebrates its new, innovative research building with a “topping-out ceremony.” The Imaging Innovation Center, designed by the architectural firm heinlewischer, will host researchers specializing in imaging and analysis alongside data experts under one roof starting in 2026.

The details of many immune defense mechanisms are still unknown, but a new study sheds light on one such mechanism. Writing in “The EMBO Journal”, researchers led by Oliver Daumke and Misha Kudryashev of the Max Delbrück Center describe exactly how GBP1 proteins render bacteria harmless by encapsulating them.

Grizzly bears in hibernation or a pineapple in an MRI scanner – at the “Science Day” at the “Robert Havemann” high school in Berlin-Karow, researchers from the Max Delbrück Center presented students of grades 11 and 12 unusual facets of their research.

Organoids help researchers understand biological processes in health and in disease. It is, however, difficult to influence the way in which they organize themselves into complex tissues. Now a group led by Nikolaus Rajewsky has found a new way to do so. They report their work in Nature Methods.

Scientists have created a new zebrafish xenograft platform to screen for novel treatments for an aggressive brain tumor called glioblastoma, according to a new study by the Gerhardt and De Smet labs published in “EMBO Molecular Medicine.”

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.

Sensory cells in the vagus nerve can detect and locate food in the esophagus. Their signals help transport the food onward to the stomach. Signal failure leads to swallowing disorders, say a team led by Carmen Birchmeier at the Max Delbrück Center. They have published their findings in “Neuron.”

When physicist Thoralf Niendorf encounters the impossible, it spurs his creativity. Using ultra high-resolution MRI technology, he peers deeper and deeper into healthy and diseased tissue. He develops novel methods that visualize biological processes within the cell.