Bioengineering

From bioprinted tissues to programmable immune cells, leading experts gathered at the Max Delbrück Center’s Bioengineering Symposium on July 6, 2026, to explore how biology, engineering, and artificial intelligence are converging to shape the next generation of medical innovations.

Researchers in the Mina Gouti lab show in “Advanced Science” that electrical pulse stimulation helps human neuromuscular organoids mature. This non-invasive approach may make it possible to use organoid models to study adult-onset diseases and to gain a better understanding of how tissues mature.

Uwe Ohler and Gaetano Gargiulo have been awarded prestigious ERC Advanced Grants. With funding of €2.5 million each, they will spend the next five years investigating how protein synthesis is regulated and identifying vulnerabilities in pediatric brain tumors.

Science journalists are invited to the Max Delbrück Center’s first Bioengineering Symposium on July 6, 2026, where leading researchers will explore how bioengineering is advancing precision medicine.

Helmholtz-funded projects highlight a new focus at the Max Delbrück Center on biomedical engineering. By combining biomedicine, artificial intelligence, and engineering, basic research can be more quickly translated into therapies.

This year, the Pre-GoBio program is supporting two planned spin-offs. Paul Schöpe aims to bring a drug targeting colorectal cancer metastases to market. And Ines Lahmann will further develop NMJCare, a model that can be used to test therapies for neuromuscular diseases.

Mina Gouti has been awarded a professorship at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The appointment will strengthen her pioneering organoid research at the Max Delbrück Center and deepen collaboration with clinicians to advance personalized medicine.

Karen Christman, a Stiftung Charité Visiting Fellow at the Max Delbrück Center, is among the first researchers to have won a Humboldt Research Award under Germany’s Global Minds Initiative. The award will enable her to expand her research in Germany on bioengineering.

Researchers led by Michael Kaminski report in “Molecular Therapy” that they have used base editing to repair mutations that cause ADPKD. The approach reduced liver cysts in mice.

Ines Lahmann explains how organoids could change medical research in a podcast called ‘Forschungsquartett’. Listen to the interview with detektor.fm editor Esther Stephan (in German).