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| No 10/2023 | December Issue |
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Dear Readers,
An eventful year is drawing to a close: a year in which the BIH celebrated its 10th anniversary. Together with the dedicated members of the BIH community and the support of our partners, we have achieved many major milestones since our head office was established in September 2013. We are particularly pleased that our research platforms, programs, and results have not only been recognized in professional circles, but have also received high marks in this year’s evaluation. The numerous spin-offs that we have launched in recent years also illustrate the quality and relevance of our work. With this in mind, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our scientists, employees, associates, and supporters. Your commitment and enthusiasm have made the BIH what it is today.
We wish you and your families a very festive holiday season and a good start to the New Year.
Your BIH Board of Directors,
Christopher Baum and Michael Frieser |
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The NCT Berlin is one of six sites of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) throughout Germany and represents a major extension of the Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center. Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), and the Max Delbrück Center seek, in collaboration with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), to further intensify Berlin’s research activities in single-cell analysis, data science, and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and to initiate early-stage clinical trials with the aim of improving cancer care for patients. Read the press release |
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On November 14, 2023, the Einstein Foundation Berlin, in cooperation with the QUEST Center for Responsible Research at the BIH, presented this year's Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research worth a total of 500,000 euros. The recipient of the Individual Award is Yves Moreau. Moreau ranks among the most ardent advocates for ethical standards in the utilization of human DNA data in the age of artificial intelligence and big data. He designs algorithms that protect personal privacy during the analysis of genetic data. This year’s Institutional Award recognizes the work of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS), which advocates for rigor, transparency, and reproducibility in social scientific research. The 2023 Early Career Award goes to the Responsible Research Assessment Initiative headed by Anne Gärtner (Dresden University of Technology). Congratulations! Read the press release of the Einstein Foundation Berlin |
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News From Charité BIH Innovation (CBI)
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With its innovative ultrasound procedure, the Charité spin-off PoroUS GmbH enables cost-effective, X-ray-free and yet precise early detection of osteoporosis. Charité BIH Innovation's IP & Licensing team (formerly Patents & Licenses) licensed the patent-protected technology to the spin-off and helped negotiate Charité's stake in the spin-off, which is held by Ascenion. The Potsdam-based start-up has now been honored with the Berlin Brandenburg Innovation Award 2023 for its innovative and outstanding entrepreneurial work. Our heartfelt congratulations!
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TimeTeller® GmbH Wins Health Innovation Award 2023
The Health Innovation Port with its partners Asklepios Kliniken, AstraZeneca, Philips and Techniker Krankenkasse in cooperation with High-Tech Gründerfonds presented the Health Innovation Award 2023 on November 23 in Hamburg. This year, the award honored the most promising ideas in the field of patient empowerment. With its innovative Digital Health solution for chemotherapy management, the Charité/BIH spin-off TimeTeller® GmbH, that had been previously supported by the BIH Digital Health Accelerator, successfully competed against all other finalists and was named the winner of the Health Innovation Award 2023. Congratulations!
Read more (in German) |
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Three Charité-funded start-ups won the renowned start-up prize in this year's start-up competition – Gründungswettbewerb – Digitale Innovationen by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK): TimeTeller® GmbH with an in-vitro diagnostic that enables customizable chronotherapy for cancer patients; Kiso Health with an app for treating psychosis and schizophrenia; and UniWearables with a wearable for continuously recording vital signs of patients in hospitals and nursing homes. The awards were presented by Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck and Anna Christmann, BMWK Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Startups, at an award ceremony at the Digital Summit 2023 on 20 November in Jena. Congratulations! Read more |
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New, current and alumni SPARK teams met for the first time last November in a networking event. After a presentation on the basics of intellectual property offered by the Patents and Licensing team, the SPARK teams introduced themselves and their projects. The night ended with a lively exchange of ideas and possible collaborations.
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News From the BIH Biomedical Innovation Academy (BIA)
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Recruitment of New Clinician Scientists Completet
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Steffen Fuchs Receives AIO Young Scientist Award
Steffen Fuchs, MD, Fellow of the BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program and paediatrician in the Department of Pediatric Oncology and Hematology (CVK) has been honored with the Young Scientist Award of the Association of Internal Oncology (AIO) for his innovative work in the field of oncology. In the paper published in Nature Communications, Dr. Fuchs and his colleagues were able to describe for the first time a global picture of the landscape of RNA rings in the childhood tumor neuroblastoma. These rings can contribute to the growth of the tumor and are closely linked to its biology. Future RNA therapies could potentially target these rings. Congratulations!
Read more (only in German)
Read the publication
To the report of Charité (only visible for internal users) |
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Clinician Scientists Awarded for Fight Against Rheumatism
This year, the Deutsche Rheumastiftung and Deutsche Rheuma-Liga have honored two fellows of the BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program for their innovative projects and ideas in the fight against rheumatism: Dr. med. Sevtap Tugce Ulas, Fellow of the Junior Digital Clinician Scientist Program and Resident at the Department of Radiology, was awarded the Project Prize 2023. In her research, she employs 4-dimensional computed tomography to better understand the patho-biomechanics of ligament lesions in patients with CPPD. The prize is endowed with 10,000 euros. Another prize (endowed with 2,500 euros) was awarded to Dr. Leon A. Danyel, Fellow of the Clinician Scientist Program and Specialist at the Department of Neurology and Experimental Neurology, for his research on the early and secure identification of optic nerve damage in Giant Cell Arteritis in the Idea Competition. Congratulations!
Read more (only in German) |
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Jakob Kreye Honored for Research on Autoimmune Brain Inflammation
Dr. Jakob Kreye from Charité has been awarded the Science Prize of the German Society for Neuropaediatrics (GNP). Jakob Kreye is a physician and scientist at the Department of Pediatrics with a focus on neurology at Charité and, as a member of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), also conducts research at the Department of Neurology with Experimental Neurology. He is supported by the BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program of the BIH Biomedical Innovation Academy. The award recognizes his findings on the development of a rare form of brain inflammation as the best scientific work in the field of young scientists. The 5,000 euros prize was presented on November 16, 2023, at the GNP's annual conference in Dortmund. Our heartfelt congratulations! To the report of Charité (only in German) |
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Momsen Reincke, MD, and Niels von Wardenburg, MD, Fellows of the BIH Charité (Junior) Clinician Scientist Program, have published a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of autoimmune encephalitis NMDAR encephalitis as first authors in Cell: Treatment of NMDAR encephalitis typically removes all B cells, leaving only a fraction to cause the disease. By reprogramming T cells, they developed NMDAR-specific chimeric autoantibody receptor (NMDAR-CAAR) T cells to specifically eliminate only the B cells that release disease-causing NMDAR autoantibodies. All other immune cells are not affected by NMDAR-CAAR T cells. The study results pave the way to phase I clinical trials to test the treatment in humans. The third shared first author is Marie Homeyer, who was supported by a BIH-Trenal doctoral stipend during her work on the study. Read the publication |
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In the BIH Lecture on December 1, 2023, Gordon Guyatt spoke about the potentially misleading findings and interpretation of findings in the medical literature. You can watch the video of his lecture here. Already on November 24, Christoph Schmitt, Chief Editor of Nature Metabolism, gave insights into the editorial process and the criteria for publication - from submission to acceptance. Read more about both lectures |
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Oxford|Berlin Autumn School 2023
From November 20-24, 2023, the Oxford|Berlin Autumn School on Open and Responsible Research took place in Oxford, organized by the University of Oxford in collaboration with the BIH QUEST Center and Oxford Brooks University. In addition to speakers such as Dorothy V.M. Bishop and Marcus R. Munafò, BIH scientists Ulf Tölch, Silke Kniffert, Alexandra Bannach-Brown, Vladislav Nachev and Tracey Weissgerber complemented the event. As in the past five years, the Early Career Researcher, including the ten Charité-affiliated scientists, were offered exciting lectures and interactive workshops on topics such as Patient Engagement, Reproducibility, Systematic Review, Research Integrity, Meta-Research and Leadership. The focus was on fostering a culture of responsibility and transparency in order to strengthen high-quality research. The next Berlin|Oxford Summer School is expected to take place in Berlin in September 2024. |
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The Berlin Institute of Health Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), Cluster Health Capital Berlin-Brandenburg, German Heart Center at Charité (DHZC) and Berlin Partner hosted the 10th RegMed Forum on November 23, 2023, at the Cranach Haus. The forum's primary objective was to engage various stakeholders in a meaningful dialogue about adopting a patient-centered approach to optimize the translation of Advanced and Personalized Therapies (ATMPs), extending beyond the realm of rare diseases. As a tangible outcome of the event, the organizer team around Timo-Nazari-Shafti plans to compile the insights and recommendations from the discussions into a White Paper and to include the insights in the national strategy for gene and cell therapy. Read more |
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All BIH events are noted in our event calender. If you would like to receive a regular overview of upcoming BIH Events, please register here. Many thanks. |
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The focus area “Single cell approaches for personalized medicine” is a joint focus area of the BIH, Charité and the Max Delbrück Center with the aim to make highly innovative single-cell approaches clinically usable for effective translation. Scientists from the BIH, Charité and the Max Delbrück Center are invited to propose translational use cases that address key questions in translational or clinical biomedicine. Submission deadline is January 7, 2024. Read more about the call |
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The BIH Biomedical Innovation Academy (BIA) and Charité's Grant Commission publish another call for applications for their BIH-MD Student Research Stipend, which support students of human medicine and dentistry at Charité for doctoral projects leading to the Dr. med., MD/PhD or Dr. med. dent. degrees. Funding is available for medicine students whose supervisors are employed at Charité or the Max Delbrück Center (MDC). The research task must be designed in such a way that the doctoral project fits thematically with the objectives of the BIH and comprises an exclusively scientific activity of at least six months. Deadline for the call is January 10, 2024, at 2 p.m. Read more about the call |
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Science x media tandem goes into its second year. Stiftung Charité is calling for scientists and media professionals to team up! The aim of our new annual science x media tandem program is to promote the opening of the life sciences in general and the quality of science communication in the respective subjects in particular. The first cohort of funded tandems from our 2023 call for proposals is now in the process of turning their ideas into reality. Deadlines for this year's call: January 31, 2024, for submitting a full application in collaboration with your media partner. Read more about the call |
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With the Visiting Fellows, Stiftung Charité is offering an annually recurring opportunity to attract exciting researchers to the life sciences in Berlin. Invite outstanding scientists from abroad or from other locations in Germany for guest stays at Charité (including BIH and DHZC) or at the Max Delbrück Center. On site, you can jointly initiate new research ideas, collaborations and strategic priorities and, if necessary, implement them with a research group. Applications will be accepted until February 5, 2024 (11:59 pm). Read more |
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