Research

Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University Medical Center Mannheim (UMM) have developed a promising cellular immunotherapy for the treatment of glioblastomas: They equipped T cells with a receptor that recognizes a protein of the brain tumors that is responsible for the dangerous stem cell properties. The therapeutic T cells directed […]

Synthetic biologists from Heidelberg University create nanotubes folded from the natural RNA biomolecule With the long-term goal of creating living cells from non-living components, scientists in the field of synthetic biology work with RNA origami. This tool uses the multifunctionality of the natural RNA biomolecule to fold new building blocks, making protein synthesis superfluous. In […]

miR-Blood is capable of revealing highly cell-type specific patterns of small RNA expression HEIDELBERG, Germany, March 06, 2024 – Hummingbird Diagnostics GmbH, a leader in using blood-based small RNAs for early disease detection and characterization, today announced a publication in Scientific Data, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal launched by Nature. The study evaluated miR-Blood, Hummingbird Diagnostics’ […]

The weight of expectant mothers could play a role in the development of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in daughters – but not in sons. This has been shown by researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is rare overall, but accounts for about a quarter of childhood cancers. To identify possible […]

Another EMBL-engineered advance to Brillouin microscopy significantly widens the aperture and provides for quick, more efficient 3-D imaging of light-sensitive samples Summary A new paper updates an EMBL technology advance even further. More details about the original technology can be found in our initial reporting here. EMBL tech developers have made an important leap forward with […]

Donating blood saves lives – but what long-term effects does this practice have on our bodies? Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the HI-STEM stem cell institute* and the German Red Cross Blood Donor Service, among others, have now discovered that frequent blood donations cause genetic adaptations in blood stem cells that promote […]

Until now, doctors knew hepatic stellate cells mainly as drivers of liver fibrosis. The actual functions of this cell type have hardly been studied to date. Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the Mannheim Medical Faculty and Columbia University in New York have now published in the journal Nature that hepatic stellate cells […]

A research team including scientists from Heidelberg University Hospital has gained new insights into HIV-1. Researchers from Martinsried, Heidelberg und Yale have discovered the mechanism behind an important step in the life cycle of HIV. Working together with teams at Heidelberg and Yale Universities, they found that the enigmatic “spacer peptide 2”, one of the […]

Using a new combination of three sensors and artificial intelligence, researchers at Heidelberg Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University and Heidelberg University Hospital are recognising patterns in babies’ movements that show whether their nervous system is developing healthily. The way an infant moves spontaneously in the first few months of life can indicate whether its nervous system […]