Dear Reader,

Berlin is a new site of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT). From now on, a total of six sites will cooperate with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT). At the Berlin site, a central partner is Charité in close collaboration with researchers from the BIH and the Max Delbrück Center. The common aim: to advance state-of-the-art clinical cancer research in Germany in a sustainable manner and thereby improving the treatment outcomes and quality of life of cancer patients.

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On January 19, 2023, the Rahel Hirsch Center for Translational Medicine officially opened next to Charité’s high-rise ward block. The opening ceremony was attended by the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey; by Berlin’s Senator for Higher Education and Research, Health, Long-Term Care and Gender Equality, Ulrike Gote; and by the State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Judith Pirscher. The building, which formerly housed surgical, intensive care and emergency units, was gutted down to the frame and completely refurbished throughout. It will be jointly used by BIH and Charité for biomedical research, outpatient care and clinical studies.

Read the press release

To the picture gallery

The EU project TEF-Health aims to test and validate innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics solutions for the healthcare sector and accelerate their path to market. It is led by Professor Petra Ritter, who heads the Brain Simulation Section at the BIH and at the Department of Neurology and Experimental Neurology of Charité. The 51 participating project partners from nine European countries will receive funding to the tune of about 60 million euros , with half coming from the European Commission under its Digital Europe program and half from national funding agencies. Some 2 million euros of the EC funding will go to the BIH.

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For a few years now, a triple combination therapy with elexacaftor, tezacaftor, and ivacaftor has been available for cystic fibrosis patients. Called CFTR modulator therapy, it responds well in most patients, but even individuals with the same CFTR gene mutation may experience different treatment responses. The reasons for this are now being investigated by a new research project led by Dr. Saskia Trump from BIH and Dr. Simon Gräber from Charité. The German Cystic Fibrosis Association is supporting the project to the tune of nearly €200,000.

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As of January 1, 2023, Professor Joachim Spranger has assumed the office of Dean at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He is thus responsible for science at Charité as a member of the Executive Board. He succeeds Professor Axel Radlach Pries, who led the faculty's fortunes for eight years. In his function as dean, Joachim Spranger is also a member of the extended board of directors of the BIH. A warm welcome!

Read the press release of Charité (only in German)

Since January 1, 2023, Professor Il-Kang Na is the new director of the BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program (CSP). The BIH Johanna Quandt Professor succeeds Professor Duška Dragun, who headed the CSP until her untimely death in late 2020. Unlike under Professor Dragun, who also acted as director of the BIH Biomedical Innovation Academy (BIA), the CSP program directorate and the BIA head are now separate. Dr. Nathalie Huber and Dr. Iwan Meij jointly lead the BIA and successfully continue Duska Dragun's work around academic personnel development. We warmly congratulate!

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Biochemist and physician Dr Leif S. Ludwig BIH and the Max Delbrück Center will receive the 2023 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for Young Researchers, as the Scientific Council of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation announced today. Building on the latest technologies for the gene sequencing of single cells, prizewinner Ludwig has developed a method that can analyse the lifelong regeneration of cells in human blood in a way that is up to 1,000 times quicker, more reliable and less expensive than has previously been possible. In so doing, he is enabling medicine to determine for the first time and with reasonable effort the activity of single blood stem cells in humans. The prize will be awarded - together with the main prize 2023 - on March 14, 2023  by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation in Frankfurt's Paulskirche. Congratulations!

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The North American Vascular Biology Organization (NAVBO) has honored Michael Potente, BIH Professor of Translational Vascular Biomedicine, with this year's Judah Folkman Award. Since 2009, the U.S. award has recognized scientists who have made a significant impact on the field of vascular biology through their original research achievements. The award will be presented at the NAVBO Annual Meeting in October 2023. Congratulations!

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In order to improve care for about six million people with severe mental illnesses in Germany, a digital platform has been developed by members of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin at Campus Charité Mitte. The platform, called Recovery Cat, provides patients with individualized therapy plans and monitoring to assist them at home during their outpatient treatment. The aim is to reduce inpatient stays and empower self-driven lifestyles. The basis for "Recovery Cat" was created in the BIH Digital Health Accelerator Program of Charité BIH Innovation, the joint technology transfer of BIH and Charité. The teams from Charité BIH Innovation involved in the spin-off of Recovery Cat GmbH were accompanied and supported by the knowledge and technology transfer company Ascenion.

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Researchers from Charité, the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG), and the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) have investigated in detail how BPTA syndrome, an extremely rare hereditary condition, arises. A change in the charge of a protein disrupts cellular self-organization, resulting in a developmental disorder. The team around first author Dr. Martin Mensah from the Institute of Medical Genetics and Human Genetics at Charité, who is also a fellow of the BIH Charité Digital Clinician Scientist Program, also identified hundreds of comparable genetic changes associated with various conditions, such as brain development disorders and predisposition to cancer. This mechanism, which has now been described in the journal Nature, could be the cause of numerous unexplained diseases and health conditions.

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How important is open science for researchers and which difficulties do they face? These are some of the questions that the Berlin Science Survey (BSS) – an online survey to be repeated every two years – set out to answer. The answers of Charité researchers are now presented in the Charité Dashboard on Responsible Research.

Go to dashboard
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Does cell fate along differentiation constitute a high-dimensional deterministic chaotic system? Leif S. Ludwig, biochemist and physician from the BIH and the Max Delbrück Center, together with MDC colleague and computational biologist Laleh Haghverdi discuss in their recently published Perspective in Stem Cell Reports key tools and concepts for navigating the high complexity of the different molecular layers and their interactions that determine cells‘ fate. Both colleagues and their teams are looking forward to your feedback! @LH33837868 @LeifLudwig

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The Berlin Stem Cell Club (BSCC) hosted two speakers on February 9, 2023: External researcher Maria Patapia Zafeiriou from the University of Göttingen gave a talk on a human cardiac muscle model ("Generation a human innervated and vascularized cardiac muscle model"). From Berlin came stem cell researcher Mina Gouti from the Max Delbrück Center with her talk "Neuromuscular organoids to model human disease". A lively discussion followed in the lecture hall and in the hybrid channel between the 150 participants and the speakers. The advantage for all local participants on-site: they are invited to a social get-together after the lectures in order to establish an even more intensive Berlin network of stem cell related scientists. The BSCC takes place every first Thursday of the month, always at the TU in Wedding and at the same time as a hybrid format.

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To promote robust and reproducible research, the BIH QUEST Center and the BIH Biomedical Innovation Academy (BIA) together with EATRIS (European Infrastructure for Translational Medicine) have successfully initiated the project "FoRR Reuse - Fundamentals of Reproducible Research e-learning Reuse" funded by EOSC-Life. The aim of this project is to develop two e-learning courses on translational medicine and robust research aimed at PhD students and researchers in biomedicine. For this purpose, the existing e-learning on robust research in biomedicine, offered by the BIH QUEST Center, will be reused and adapted to the training needs of the new target groups. To start the project, on January 23+24, 2023 colleagues from QUEST and the BIA met with EATRIS colleagues at the BIH premises "Am Zirkus" for a Kick-off meeting.

On December 12, 2022, the first public evening event of the working group "Gene Technology Report – Monitoring and Interdisciplinary Dialog" since its takeover at the BIH took place on the topic of RNA. The speakers explained the relevance and potential of different types of RNA for biology and medicine. Markus Landthaler (Professor of RNA Biology at HU; Group Leader at Max Delbrück Center) provided insight into RNA biology, Leif Ludwig (Group Leader at BIH and Max Delbrück Center) explained new diagnostic possibilities using single cell analysis, and Michael Wenger (Vice President Clinical Development at BioNTech) presented BioNTech's research on mRNA-based immunotherapies against cancer. The video recording of the event is available on the website of the WG Gene Technology Report (only in German).

Read more about the Gene Technology Report
Read the publication "In Focus: RNA."

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Attention young scientists! Are you able to present your life science discovery in 3 minutes in a layman´s language? Then apply until February 20, 2023, win a pitch coaching and save your prize money at our Speed Lecture Award final @ BIONNALE on May 20 in Berlin. Please fill in the form here.

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To the application form

The BIH Biomedical Innovation Academy (BIA) and the Medical Faculty of Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have published their first call for applications this year for the prestigious BIH Charité (Junior) Clinician Scientist Program. The program is a recognized, modern career path in academic medicine that provides research-oriented physicians with a structured residency with defined space for clinical and basic research. In addition, the (Junior) Digital Clinician Scientist Program was announced. All calls were published on January 26, 2023. Deadline for all calls is March 15, 2023.

All details about the calls

From May to July 2023, the BIH Biomedical Innovation Academy (BIA) will be running the Charité Flagship program of the Berlin Leadership Academy as part of the BUA (Berlin University Alliance) for the fourth time. The program "Effective and Efficient Decisions – Confident Leadership in Challenging Situations" supports in improving the decision-making quality, speed and sustainability and thereby developing a confident approach to leadership situations characterized by complexity. The trainer Professor Daniel Wrede will guide the participants through four modules: Making the Right(er) Decisions, Psychology of Decision Making, Decisions in Personnel Selection, and risk analysis and Making Collective Decisions. Interested leaders can register for the program right now.

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The Deep Tech Award starts again: Since January 26, 2023, you can apply with your solution and win 10,000 euros per category! Since 2015, the award honors innovative and market-ready Berlin-based deep-tech products and solutions based on software or hardware. Your company has developed something? Then go ahead and apply! The application deadline is April 23, 2023.

Read more about the Deep Tech Award (in German)

Researchers working to increase the transparency, rigour and robustness of scientific practice and results – for example through replication studies and open science approaches – can apply for the Einstein Foundation Award 2023. The international price is awarded in three categories: to individual researchers, to institutions (each €200K), and to early career researchers (€100K). Deadline for Entries is April 30, 2023. The award winners will be announced at the end of 2023.

All details about the call