Humboldt Research Award winner Prof. Hao Yan has been conducting research at the 2nd Institute of Physics at the University of Stuttgart since May. He is regarded as one of the world's leading experts in the field of DNA nanotechnology. "My work has many points of commonality with the topics that my colleagues in Stuttgart are focusing on," says Yan. "I have therefore been cooperating with Professor Laura Na Liu's working…

Dossier - 10/11/2014

Cell and gene therapies from bench to bedside

While cell therapy has become standard treatment for a number of blood cancers, most cell and gene therapy approaches for the treatment of hereditary and metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative disorders and cancer are still in the experimental phases or early clinical trials. However, recent successes give rise to the hope that cell and gene therapies will in future make important contributions to previously incurable diseases.

The RNA Printer® is CureVac’s integrated and automated manufacturing solution for RNA vaccines and therapeutics. CureVac RNA Printer GmbH to provide dedicated infrastructure to accelerate development and broaden application range of The RNA Printer®. Dr. Markus Bergmann appointed as General Manager for CureVac RNA Printer GmbH.

On March 23, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval to the first targeted radioligand therapy against metastatic prostate cancer based on a joint patent of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University of Heidelberg. The agent significantly improves the chances of survival for those affected.

In the 2022 allocation round for the award of the prestigious Consolidator Grants of the European Research Council, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have been successful. For their projects in the fields of photovoltaics and medical sensor technology, physicist Ulrich W. Paetzold and chemist Frank Biedermann will receive approximately two million euros over the next five years.

Certain developmental signals play a significant role in maintaining our genetic blueprints. They prevent alterations in the genome, known as mosaicism. The underlying biological mechanism helps the DNA to produce an identical copy of itself during cell division using the original genetic blueprint. However, it can also contribute to genomic mosaicism during nerve cell development.

University of Tübingen research team shortens the search for attackers that can wipe out multiresistant pathogens – with the aim of treating infections without antibiotics

Article - 22/03/2019

Personalised therapies for treating metastasing breast cancer

Breast cancer is characterised by broad genetic diversity. Successful treatment is made even more difficult by the fact that, in advanced breast cancer, the properties of metastases often differ significantly from the primary tumour. The Heidelberg CATCH study is now collecting genetic profiles from patients' metastasis tissue samples, which can be used to tailor therapy to individual requirements.

Since 2019, the Research Training Group (RTG) "Intraoperative Multisensoric Tissue Differentiation in Oncology," a collaboration between the University of Stuttgart and the University of Tübingen, has been advancing research in medical technology. With the help of new sensor methods, the researchers want to help make surgical procedures on cancer patients safer and more effective.

A research team from the Heidelberg Medical Faculty, the German Cancer Research Center, the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) and the Max Delbrück Center has discovered new details about the spread of the incurable bone marrow cancer multiple myeloma in the body: When the cancer cells break out of the bone and multiply outside the bone marrow, a wide variety of tumor cells arise, accompanied by a significantly altered immune response.

Researchers at University of Galway, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) Heidelberg University, and Heidelberg University Hospital have created digital babies to better understand infants’ health in their critical first 180 days of life. The international team created computer models that simulate the unique metabolic processes of each baby. The models can help to better understand rare metabolic diseases.

This year, the Brain Prize worth more than one million euros, honors pioneering work on nervous system-cancer interactions: Neurologist Frank Winkler, who researches at the Heidelberg University and at the German Cancer Research Center and treats patients with brain tumors at the Heidelberg University Hospital, discovered that nerve cells in the brain communicate with brain tumor cells. This causes the disease to progress.

Dossier - 20/12/2012

Medical technology serving healthcare

Modern healthcare would be impossible without medical technology. The achievements in medical technology are indispensable for our health and quality of life. The range of medical technology available covers surgical instruments and implants to diagnostic methods and medical devices.

Spindiag GmbH, together with the University of Freiburg and the Hahn-Schickard-Gesellschaft für angewandte Forschung e.V., was awarded the Technology Transfer Prize 2020 from the German Physical Society (DPG) on April 09, 2022 for the development of the PCR-based rapid test system Rhonda.

With "OrgaPlexing", scientists at the MPI of Immunobiology and Epigenetics have developed a new method that shows how guardian cells of the immune system, the macrophages, orchestrate their cell structures during inflammation or bacterial infection, making it possible to observe the interactions between several organelles simultaneously and thus providing insights into cell metabolism and the production of inflammatory molecules.

Dossier - 13/05/2013

The human proteome the next major goal

The “Human Proteome Project”, a ten-year global initiative that is making a systematic effort to map all human proteins, has moved from the planning to the experimental stage. How significant and how effective the project will be depends on how much the resources offered are used by proteome researchers and on the data that the researchers bring into the project.

At the University Hospital Tübingen, clinical evaluation of an in-house developed vaccine (CoVac-1) against SARS-CoV-2 was started in November 2020 under the direction of Prof. Dr. Juliane Walz in the CCU Translational Immunology of the Medical Clinic (Medical Director Prof. Dr. Helmut Salih). Now the results of the Phase I study are available and demonstrate a potent activation of the T-cell response against the coronavirus.

Bacteria of the species Pseudomonas aeruginosa are antibiotic-resistant hospital germs that can enter blood, lungs and other tissues through wounds and cause life-threatening infections. In a joint project, researchers from the Universities of Freiburg and Strasbourg in France have discovered a mechanism that likely contributes to the severity of P. aeruginosa infections.

Glycolysis is an important sugar degradation pathway that cancer cells in particular depend on. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now shown that liver cancer cells in mice and humans depend on a key enzyme of glycolysis, Aldolase A. When it is switched off, glycolysis reverses from an energy-producing to an energy-consuming process.

A guardian molecule ensures that liver cells do not lose their identity. The discovery is of great importance for cancer medicine because a change of identity of cells has come into focus as a fundamental principle of carcinogenesis for several years. The research team was able to show that the newly discovered guardian is so powerful that it can slow down highly potent cancer drivers and cause malignant liver tumors to regress in mice.

Article - 28/03/2019

Supporting the human use of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is no longer a vision of the future, but is already in our midst: whether it is parking aids or search engines, we use the technology quite naturally in many areas of daily life. It promises new, unlimited opportunities, but also poses risks. Experts from the Integrata Foundation in Tübingen work on ethical issues and the human use of IT for improving the life of as many people as possible.

Applying and developing new technologies for DNA synthesis to pave the way for producing entire artificial genomes – that is the goal of a new interdisciplinary center, 'Center for Synthetic Genomics', that is being established at Heidelberg University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

Prof. Dr. Peter Loskill and Dr. Silke Riegger from the 3R Center Tübingen for in-vitro models and animal testing alternatives have been awarded the Ursula M. Händel Animal Welfare Prize 2024. The prize, endowed with 80,000 euros, was awarded to them in Würzburg for the development of organ-on-chip (OoC) systems as an alternative to animal testing.

Scientists at the University of Stuttgart have succeeded in controlling the structure and function of biological membranes with the help of "DNA origami". The system they developed may facilitate the transportation of large therapeutic loads into cells. This opens up a new way for the targeted administration of medication and other therapeutic interventions.