ERC

Whether aggressive cancer cells can spread unchecked depends, to no small degree, on their cellular neighborhood. Fabian Coscia wants to analyze exactly what happens at the proteome level during this interaction. He has now been selected for a €1 million-plus grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to pursue this research.

Organoids have to be fed and cared for continuously so that they can mature. So far, it is mostly a manual process – not suitable for industrial drug screening. Now, the European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Mina Gouti a Proof of Concept Grant to tackle scalability and reproducibility.

They have their sights set on serious diseases: Gabriele G. Schiattarella analyzes mechanisms of heart failure, Simon Haas wants to improve immunotherapies for leukemia and Michael Sigal would like to prevent gastrointestinal diseases. Now, the ERC is awarding the researchers with a Starting Grant.

The contractile and elastic properties of the heart are finely tuned. This is a prerequisite for the cardiac cycle and efficient adaptation. At the MDC, Michael Gotthardt investigates the underlying molecular and biomechanical mechanisms. He is awarded with an ERC Advanced Grant for this work.

How can a heart heal itself? And what determines the sex of a living organism? The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Consolidator Grants to Dr. Jan Philipp Junker and Dr. Darío Lupiáñez to tackle these questions. Each researcher will receive €2 million over five years for their research.

High-throughput methods that help search for new cancer drugs often rely on oversimplified models. For example, they do not account for the most common cell states found in patients with cancer. MDC researcher Gaetano Gargiulo has now received an ERC Proof of Concept Grant to seek a solution to this problem.

Both researchers study communication, but at different levels: Dr. Stefanie Grosswendt and Dr. Alison Barker have been awarded European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants. The prestigious grants provide about €1.5 million in funding over a period of five years.

The European Research Council (ERC) awarded Dr. Mina Gouti a €2.8 million Consolidator Grant to further develop miniature neuromuscular organoids for studying neuromuscular development and diseases. It was the second honor in as many weeks; she was also named an EMBO Young Investigator for her work.

Two MDC scientists – Kathrin de Rosa and Ilaria Piazza – have earned ERC Starting Grants to fuel their pioneering research. They are seeking answers to questions that may one day change the way we approach vaccines and think about how small molecules influence gene expression and disease.

With the appointment of BIH Professor Michael Potente, the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) are strengthening their joint focus area “Translational Vascular Biomedicine.” Potente, a trained cardiologist, is particularly interested in the innermost cell layer that lines our blood vessels, the endothelium. Integrative Vascular Biology