Bacterial glitter: New findings open up possibilities for sustainable color technologies

Predictions with artificial intelligence

10-Jul-2024 - An international team of researchers has investigated the mechanism that makes some types of bacteria reflect light without using pigments. The researchers were interested in the genes responsible and discovered important ecological connections. These findings were published in the current issue ...

Lab-Made Sugars and Nanobodies from Alpacas Against Cancer: Oren Moscovitz Wins Prestigious Hermann Neuhaus Prize

Two start-ups are already working to bring these findings closer to public fruition

18-Jun-2024 - Dr. Oren Moscovitz has been awarded €25,000 by the Max Planck Society for his promising research toward treatments and non-invasive diagnostics for cancer, which could potentially reduce overall cancer-related deaths. Moscovitz and his team exploit unique sugar patterns found on cancer cells and ...

Chemists mimic natural molecular structures: New possibility for vaccine development

Fluorinated sugar molecules as vaccine leads against meningitis B and C

28-May-2024 - Meningococci (Neisseria meningitidis) are disease-causing bacteria that cause life-threatening meningitis, or blood poisoning (septicaemia). There are a number of meningococcal variants worldwide, known as serogroups, and in Germany the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) recommends ...

With the Flick of a Switch: Shaping Cells with Light

The therapeutic potential of this research is immense

15-Apr-2024 - Imagine switching on a light and being able to understand and control the inner dynamics of a cell. This is what the Dimova group has achieved: by shining lights of different colors on replicates of cells, they altered the interactions between cellular elements.Controlling these complex ...

New Discovery: Toward sugar origami

Folded carbohydrates could open up completely new perspectives in biomedicine and materials science

06-Jul-2023 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) have designed a carbohydrate sequence capable of folding into a stable secondary structure. Until now, such self-folding biopolymers had only been developed for DNA and proteins, and sugars were previously considered too ...

Anti-counterfeiting fluorescent marker developed - Sweet code with laser printing

07-Jun-2023 - A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) has developed a method that could make it more difficult to counterfeit products in the future. The new and patented method makes it possible to produce unique, non-copyable fluorescent patterns quickly, ...

Natural super glue from mistletoe berries

A promising discovery

21-Jun-2022 - A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) and McGill University in Canada discovered strong adhesive properties of white-berry mistletoe. The mistletoe berry's flexible fibers adhere to both skin and cartilage as well as to various synthetic materials ...

Targeted immune stimulation for more effective vaccines

Cutanos, a spin-off from the Max Planck Society, is developing novel vaccines and immunotherapies

06-Jul-2021 - In the future, it could be possible to stimulate the immune system with extremely high efficacy via the skin. Cutanos GmbH, a spin-off from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, has developed a corresponding method for modulating immune cells in the skin. The LC-TDS technology ...

Researchers link breast cancer and bone growth

Scientists made a surprisingly opposite discovery

26-Mar-2021 - A research team consisting of materials scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) in Potsdam and biologists from Cornell University in Ithaca, USA revealed that bones may grow in response to certain signals from a distant breast tumor. This may be a preemptive ...

Max Planck director receives science award for production of affordable drugs

Sustainable and affordable: Using plant waste, air and light to produce an active substance against malaria

13-Jan-2021 - The American Chemical Society (ACS) has awarded Peter H. Seeberger and two colleagues the "ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry" for developing a particularly efficient chemical process for producing artemisinin. All the components needed to produce the active ingredient come from nature: ...