Interview

Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) Professor Christopher Baum

The current pandemic has shown very clearly how important it is to translate medical research results into practice. Promoting this process of translation is the task of the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), which was integrated into the Charité last year. In October 2020, Professor Christopher Baum took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors at BIH. We talked to him about his first few months in office and his plans for the future.

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Events

Charité BIH Entrepreneurship Summit

BIONNALE

Cluster meets | Virchow 2.0 – implementing cell-based medicine in Berlin

16th Current Topics in Bioinformatics: (Deep) Learning from -OMICS Data?

For more events from the cluster healthcare industries click here.

Business News

atai Life Sciences Announces the Closing of its $157 Million Series D Financing Round 

atai Life Sciences ("atai" or the "Company"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing psychedelic and non-psychedelic compounds for various mental health indications, today announced the successful closing of its $157 million Series D financing round. The round was led by our existing investors Apeiron Investment Group, the family office of atai's founder Christian Angermayer, Thiel Capital, and joined by Woodline Partners LP.

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Cornerstone laid for BerlinBioCube 

There is strong demand for laboratories, and biotech entrepreneurs need space in state-of-the-art research facilities. Now, in the presence of Berlin’s Governing Mayor, the cornerstone for the new BerlinBioCube incubator has been laid on Campus Berlin-Buch.

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ProBioGen licenses GlymaxX® Technology to Sanofi 

ProBioGen AG has signed a commercial multi-product license agreement with Sanofi. Under such agreement, Sanofi will integrate ProBioGen’s proprietary GlymaxX technology into their product development strategy for an undisclosed number of antibody candidates across several business units.

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KNAUER opens offices in Austria and Switzerland  

KNAUER has opened offices in Austria and Switzerland with immediate effect - for greater customer proximity and direct specialist advice on site.
KNAUER, a family business known for its sustainable approach, previously only had its own customer advisors in Germany and relied internationally on a network of specialist dealers.

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SCIENION continues to grow and will build new headquarters in Berlin Adlershof 

SCIENION AG, located in the Technology Park Adlershof since its foundation in 2001, today announced that the expanding company will build larger new headquarters at Wagner-Régeny Street in the same district of Berlin.

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Science and Technology News

Newsweek ranking: Charité is one of the best hospitals in the world

This is the third year that Newsweek has partnered with Statista Inc, the respected global data research firm, to reveal the World's Best Hospitals— and it may be our most important ranking yet.
As the events of 2020 made clear, our lives and those of our loved ones may rest on the kind of health care we have access to. The 2,000 hospitals named in this list—which covers 25 countries, including United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada —stand out for their consistent excellence, including distinguished physicians, top-notch nursing care and state-of-the-art technology.

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Detonating fuse for breast cancer discovered

Targeted treatment of basal-like breast cancer could be facilitated by YAP inhibitors in the future. As reported by an MDC team headed by Walter Birchmeier in the scientific journal "Cancer Research", this type of cancer requires the support of the YAP protein to stimulate the growth of cancer stem cells.

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Humboldt-Universität study helps to understand how cells are becoming resistant to cancer medication

Human cells are constantly changing shape. Biologists know that these morphological changes reflect changes in a cell’s function but our ability to understand the meaning behind a cell’s shape has, to date, been limited. In their new study Rune Linding from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) and his colleagues have utilized artificial intelligence to learn, and interpret, changes in the morphology of cancer cells in order to understand how these cells are becoming resistant to cancer medication.

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New cancer-fighting immunotherapy enters clinical trials

Researchers from the MDC and Charité have developed a new gene therapy based around a special T-cell receptor that helps the immune system effectively recognize and fight cancer cells. The safety of the novel therapy is now being tested on patients with bone marrow cancer in a phase I clinical trial.

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Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Francis Crick Institute have developed a mass spectrometry-based technique capable of measuring samples containing thousands of proteins within just a few minutes

Researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Francis Crick Institute have developed a mass spectrometry-based technique capable of measuring samples containing thousands of proteins within just a few minutes. It is faster and cheaper than a conventional blood count. To demonstrate the technique’s potential, the researchers used blood plasma collected from COVID-19 patients. Using the new technology, they identified eleven previously unknown proteins which are markers of disease severity. The work has been published in Nature Biotechnology.

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Link between breast cancer and bone growth revealed

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 defense mechanism against skeletal metastasis. These study results could influence diagnostic tests and therapeutic breast cancer treatments in the future.

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165 new cancer genes identified with the help of machine learning

A new algorithm can predict which genes cause cancer, even if their DNA sequence is not changed. A team of researchers in Berlin combined a wide variety of data, analyzed it with “Artificial Intelligence” and identified numerous cancer genes. This opens up new perspectives for targeted cancer therapy in personalized medicine and for the development of biomarkers.

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Large Molecules Transported into Living Cells: Researchers Achieve Breakthrough into Cell Interior

It is one of the big pharmacological questions: How do you get large functional biomolecules like proteins or antibodies into a living cell? Linking antibodies or proteins with cell-penetrating peptides is a promising approach—but it has not yet fully led to the anticipated results. Researchers from the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) in Berlin and the TU Darmstadt present a new solution: If these peptides are also attached to the cell surface, then proteins or antibodies are transported much better into the cell interior. The groundbreaking results have just been published in the journal Nature Chemistry.

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Technology and Cooperation Offers

Molecular Surface Engineering (MSE) for life science research and multiplex diagnostics

A German nanotechnology company is offering modification of surfaces using Molecular Surface Engineering (MSE) for multiplex diagnostics and life science research. They are looking for partners that are interested in applying these technologies in the framework of a research cooperation or a manufacturing agreement.

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Synthesis of secondary metabolites in filamentous fungi

A Berlin-based university has developed a process of synthesis of secondary metabolites in fungal host organisms for the production of novel antibiotics. The institute is interested in a cooperation in the framework of a license or a research cooperation agreement.

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For more news in the life science region Berlin-Brandenburg click here.