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| No 8/2020 | October Issue |
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Dear Readers,
it was a pleasure! When the Nobel Committee announced on 7 October that Emmanuelle Charpentier would receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2020, together with her American colleague Jennifer Doudna, all of Berlin was delighted with her. Our new CEO Christopher Baum also had a “goosebumps” moment, because he has known the CRISPR/Cas9 developer for a long time. It was he who helped bring her to Germany from Umea in Sweden in 2013: As President of the Hanover Medical School he was involved in her appointment to the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig. In the meantime, both have arrived in Berlin: Apparently a good address for science.
We wish you lots of fun with the October issue of our BIH Newsletter!
Your BIH Newsletter Team
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In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the research group of Professor Daniel Strech, deputy director of the BIH QUEST Center, has received a BMBF grant for the PRECOPE project. The project aims to enable the implementation of research ethical standards during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April this year the working group already conducted a survey with the 52 German ethics commissions on challenges and possible solutions with research proposals on COVID-19. The results can be found here as a German report and here published as an English preprint. Read more |
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Initiated and coordinated by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the National Research Network of University Medicine on COVID-19 is pooling research efforts across Germany. Its aim is to make findings relevant to the novel disease available as quickly as possible. The framework for nationally coordinated Covid-19 research has now been established. The research network has drawn up plans for 13 large-scale collaborative projects, which are to be led by different university medical centers. Roland Eils, the BIH Chair for Digital Health, is the coordinating project leader of one of the funded projects. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research ( BMBF) is providing some €150 million in total funding to support the research network. Read more |
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On October 2, 2020, Professor Christopher Baum was officially installed as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) in a ceremony attended by State Secretary Christian Luft (BMBF) and State Secretary Steffen Krach (Berlin Senate Chancellery – Higher Education and Research). Baum received the baton from Professor Axel R. Pries, who, in addition to his work as Dean of the Charité, had temporarily led the BIH for two years. The experienced scientific manager and expert in translation, molecular medicine and gene therapy plans to further develop medical translation into an exact, measurable science, with the aim of providing concrete help to people. To the press release
To the photo gallery |
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Researchers from three continents have produced a first extensive draft of a cell atlas of the human heart to understand how this vital organ functions and to shed light on what goes wrong in cardiovascular disease. As the team around Norbert Hübner from the Max Delbrück Center reports in Nature, it reveals a huge cellular and molecular diversity. To the press releaseTo the publication |
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Federal Minister of Education and Research Anja Karliczek announced on 23 September that Berlin will become one of four new NCT locations in addition to Heidelberg and Dresden, thus recognizing the outstanding achievements of Charité and its two cooperation partners – Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) – in advancing cancer treatment and research. The State of Berlin not only strongly supported the application but is planning the construction of a new innovative facility for the NCT, which is expected to be located in Berlin-Wedding. To the press release |
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With Dr. Jennifer Kirwan, the first female head of a BIH Core Unit will take up her work at BIH on October 1, 2020. The BIH founded the Metabolomics Core Unit in 2015 together with the MDC on the Buch Campus. In the course of the integration of the BIH into Charité, the unit will be completely transferred to the BIH and will continue its work in the newly built Käthe Beutler Haus on Campus Buch in early 2021. More about the BIH Core Unit Metabolomics |
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As a new BIH Core Unit of the BIH focus area Regenerative Therapies, the laboratory around Dr. Oliver Klein will offer a "tissue typing" service in the future. This service includes imaging mass spectrometry to detect regional tissue heterogeneity based on spatial molecular signatures (proteins, metabolites) and high-resolution mass spectrometry for proteomic characterization of biomaterials. Read more (only in German) |
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Professor Christopher Baum, Chief Executive Officer of the Berlin Institute of Health, congratulates this year's two Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. "This really is a thrilling moment and I am very pleased," said Baum, who knows Charpentier personally well. "The development of CRISPR/Cas9 was a true pioneering achievement and has revolutionized the entire field of genetic research and especially gene therapy. I am also pleased that with the two Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and the winner in physics, Andrea Ghez, three women have already received the highest distinction in science this year. This is a great day for science, for patients and for women."
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BIH New Buildings ATIZ and KBH: Days of Open Construction Sites in September
The BIH and the Charité have invited all interested parties to a guided tour of the construction site at the end of the structural work in the Ambulanz-, Translations- und Innovationszentrum (ATIZ). Several guided tours took place on Friday, September 11, 2020. Also at the Campus Buch at the future BIH location Käthe-Beutler-Haus (KBH). Read more |
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News From the BIH Academy
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BIA has piloted an Advanced Clinician Scientist Program (AdCSP) on behalf of the executive boards of the Charité and BIH in order to close the existing gap after specialist training and to promote the target group of scientifically active specialists who have just completed their habilitation and are developing towards becoming senior physicians or have just become senior physicians. With the help of an innovative concept an optimal interlocking of individual and structural support is aimed at. The AdCSP is aimed at clinical facilities and institutes of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin that are involved in clinical care. The aim is to create new senior physician positions with protected research periods. To the call for proposals |
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At the end of June 2020, the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation published its second call for Else Kröner Clinician Scientist Professorships. Within the framework of this call for applications, the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation will award three professorships. Only one candidate per faculty may apply. An internal Charité preselection procedure was designed and organized under the auspices of BIA. The application procedure was carried out via the BIH application and report portal. In addition, a panel of experts was formed for the pre-selection of representative hospital directors of the Charité. The aim of the Charité faculty is to identify the best candidate and to provide maximum support for this application.
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The BIH Academy can announce several success stories from the alumni of the BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program. No less than four former participants of the BIH Clinician Scientist Program received calls for professorships, many others contributed significantly to outstanding publications. This shows once again how outstandingly the program supports the personal careers of young talents, but also contributes to the excellence of clinical research. We congratulate! To the success stories |
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News From the BIH QUEST Center
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The QUEST again offers three-hour Open Data workshops, now corona-compatible as an online format. The first two events will take place on 21.10. in English and on 19.11. in German. |
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Over 60 participants from SPARK programs from all around the globe met on 11 September 2020 to present updates, discuss best practice examples and expand cross-border collaboration. The focus of this year's online meeting was on educational activities and COVID-19 projects initiated by the SPARK network of scientists without borders. Read more |
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Dr. Andreas Kurtz received the award for the best paper in March. The head of the BCRT research group "Regeneration by Stem Cells and International Stem Cell Register" describes in the paper published in Advanced Science how the extracellular matrix can determine in which direction induced pluripotent stem cells develop. The goal is to one day grow replacement organs in the Petri dish. Read more |
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Due to the current situation regarding Sars-CoV-2/COVID-19 almost all BIH events will be implemented by using online tools, as noted in the event calender. If you would like to receive a regular overview of upcoming BIH Events, please register here. Many thanks. |
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Did you know that only 17.7 % of English language biographies and 15.6 % of German language biographies in Wikipedia are for women? Our online Wikipedia edit-a-thon aims to increase the visibility of women scientists and other underrepresented groups and you can contribute. Register now to learn how to edit and write own articles in Wikipedia and make the world’s largest encyclopedia more diverse. Read more |
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On 1 October 2020 the new BIH CEO Professor Christopher Baum took office. During the BIH Lecture Series, he revealed how he intends to further develop BIH into an institute that is not only dedicated to translation, by helping to transfer research results into applications, but also understands translation itself as a science that can be measured and evaluated. Video presentation |
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On 17 September 2020, the BIH Translation Hub Multi Omics started a new online lecture series on the use of omics technologies and approaches in translational medicine. In the first lecture, Prof. Tami Geiger (Tel Aviv University, IL) discussed how mass spectrometry-based proteomics can be used to understand cancer heterogeneity in breast cancer and melanoma. Read more |
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Helen Kühn joined the BIH as Personal Assistant of Dr. Doris Meder, the Head of Science and Operations, in October 2020. Following her studies in Molecular Biotechnology at the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg, Helen Kühn conducted her PhD thesis in Molecular Biology at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Through volunteer work she also acquired knowledge in project management, which she now wants to apply together with her scientific expertise to support Droris Meder and the BIH.
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Maren Hülsmann supports QUEST since October 2020 to support the quality management in the recently established NUM Organostrat project. This multi-center consortium investigates cell tropism of viruses, specifically SARS-CoV-2, in multiple organoid models. Maren Hülsmann is a biomedical researcher with a focus on the study of human diseases using novel cell biology and imaging strategies. She conducted her PhD research at the Research Center Jülich nd then went to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York as a postdoctoral fellow.
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