“And the Science Awards go to…”

Bayer Foundation announces Science Awards winners of 2024

08-Nov-2024 - Professor Meritxell Huch receives this year’s Otto Bayer Award. The Otto Bayer Award is presented alternating with the Hansen Family Award every second year. The award recognizes leading scientists working in German-speaking countries for ground-breaking research in chemistry or biochemistry. The ...

Epigenetic changes reprogram astrocytes into brain stem cells

Discovery shows that astrocytes could potentially be used in regenerative medicine to replace damaged nerve cells

09-Sep-2024 - Resting brain stem cells hardly differ from normal astrocytes, which support the nerve cells in the brain. How can almost identical cells perform such different functions? The key lies in the methylation of their genetic material, which gives these special astrocytes stem cell properties. ...

Prostate cancer: AI should help to avoid unnecessary biopsies

08-Aug-2024 - For which men is a biopsy necessary to confirm or rule out suspected prostate cancer if the PSA value is elevated? In a retrospective study, scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Department of Urology at Heidelberg University Hospital have shown that the combination of ...

Phagocytes from the culture dish for cancer therapy

"Our induced phagocytes have the potential to destroy cancer cells in therapeutic applications by devouring them"

13-Jun-2024 - Cell-based cancer therapies often fail nowadaystoday because the immune cells are unable to penetrate the tumor efficiently. The use of certain phagocytes is considered a promising alternative - but until now it has not been possible to grow them in sufficient quantities in the culture dish. ...

Almost two million euros for biotech start-up

BMBF funds DKFZ spin-off for the development of an antibody therapy against pancreatic cancer

12-Jun-2024 - Panosome GmbH, a biotech company founded in Heidelberg in 2020, specializes in the development of monoclonal antibodies for a wide range of medical purposes. The basis for this is the VAST technology platform jointly developed by Panosome and DKFZ. Panosome now wants to use the VAST technology to ...

Predicting cancer risks on the basis of national health data

If cancers are detected early, the chances of cure are generally higher

27-May-2024 - Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the European Bioinformatics Institute EMBL-EBI, Hinxton, UK, are using the Danish health registers to predict individual risks for 20 different types of cancer with a high degree of accuracy. The prediction model can also be transferred ...

Intermittent fasting protects against liver inflammation and liver cancer

Drug partially mimics fasting effects

13-May-2024 - Fatty liver disease often leads to chronic liver inflammation and can even result in liver cancer. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University of Tübingen have now shown in mice* that intermittent fasting on a 5:2 schedule can halt this development. The fasting ...

Precise localization of miniature robots and surgical instruments inside the body

What until recently sounded like science fiction is now well advanced in development: Nanorobots that move independently through the body

04-Apr-2024 - In the medicine of the future, tiny robots will navigate independently through tissue and medical instruments will indicate their position inside the body during surgery. Both require doctors to be able to localize and control the devices precisely and in real time. Until now, there has been no ...

First overview of the long-term effects of cancer immunotherapies

02-Apr-2024 - Cancer therapies with so-called "immune checkpoint inhibitors" (ICI) are now widely used, but their long-term effects have hardly been recorded. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now for the first time systematically summarized studies on the long-term effects of these ...

Machine learning classifier accelerates the development of cellular immunotherapies

"To finance further development, we have founded the biotech start-up Tcelltech"

19-Mar-2024 - Making a personalised T cell therapy for cancer patients currently takes at least six months; scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University Medical Center Mannheim have shown that the laborious first step of identifying tumor-reactive T cell receptors for patients can ...