EU-LIFE Community Meeting 2024
It was a pleasure to be the host of the 11th EU-LIFE Community Meeting at CeMM in Vienna. Giulio Superti-Furga, Anita Ender and several CeMM representatives welcomed Marta Agostinho and the EU-LIFE office team, and the Board of Directors and Working Group members of the 15 EU-LIFE partner institutes. The official EU-LIFE Community Meeting took place on Thursday, 25.4.2024, with more than 100 participants, contributing to 9 different Working…
2. Place of Houska-Prize 2024 for Giulio Superti-Furga and his team at CeMM
Congratulations to Giulio Superti-Furga and his team for having been awarded the 2. Houska Prize 2024 of the B&C Private Foundation in the highly competitive category ‘University Research’. The Houska Prize Jury recognized the accomplishment of having identified Feeblin as a new therapeutic approach for autoimmune diseases and for the effort to translate this finding by developing a new drug in cooperation with the domestic business partner and…
Ready and Vigilant: Immune Cells on Standby
When pathogens invade the body, the immune system must react immediately to prevent or contain an infection. But how do our defence cells stay ready when no attacker is in sight? Scientists from Vienna have found a surprising explanation: They are constantly stimulated by healthy tissue. This keeps them active and ready to respond to pathogens. Based on this insight, future medications could be devised to selectively enhance our immune system’s…
A shortcut for drug discovery: Novel method predicts on a large scale how small molecules interact with proteins
For most human proteins, there are no small molecules known to bind them chemically (so called “ligands”). Ligands frequently represent important starting points for drug development but this knowledge gap critically hampers the development of novel medicines. Researchers at CeMM, in a collaboration with Pfizer, have now leveraged and scaled a method to measure the binding activity of hundreds of small molecules against thousands of human…
CeMM Research Report 2023: On the path to utopia
We would like to present you the CeMM Research Report 2023 dedicated to: on the path to Utopia in research. It represents our endeavour to embrace the joy of dreaming and visualizing the future. What does the future hold? We have embarked on a journey to envision the future, going beyond traditional planning to truly 'dream it up'. Inspired by the EU-LIFE Utopia Conference in Lisbon in 2023, we posed this question to the CeMM community, inviting…
Light Show in Living Cells: New method allows simultaneous fluorescent labelling of many proteins
Observing proteins precisely within cells is extremely important for many branches of research but has been a significant technical challenge - especially in living cells, as the required fluorescent labelling had to be individually attached to each protein. The research group led by Stefan Kubicek at CeMM has now overcome this hurdle: With a method called "vpCells," it is possible to label many proteins simultaneously, using five different…
ERC Advanced Grant for CeMM Adjunct PI Nuno Maulide
We congratulate Nuno Maulide, CeMM Adjunct PI and Professor at the University of Vienna, for receiving the ERC Advanced Grant - which makes him one of the very few people in Europe who have won all the European Research Council grants in a row (ERC Starting Grant in 2011, ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016, ERC Proof of Concept Grant in 2018 and 2023). In his new ERC project "C-HANCE" hosted by the University of Vienna, Nuno Maulide explores the…
EU-LIFE Charter of Independent Life Science Research Institutes
CeMM is a proud member of the EU-LIFE alliance since the beginning, and Giulio Superti-Furga, Scientific Director of CeMM and the Ri.MED Foundation, is the current Chair of EU-LIFE. The 15 EU-LIFE member institutes are leading and renowned life science research centers in Europe, and are profiting from the exchange of best practices, having common principles of research excellence, and contributing to European research policy. The different…
New Insights Could Improve Treatment of Liver Fibrosis
Repeated or chronic liver injury, for example by viral hepatitis or alcohol consumption, triggers a complicated molecular process of scaring called liver fibrosis. Researchers at CeMM and MedUni Vienna have now succeeded in better understanding this process in a new study by examining gene activities at various stages of the liver disease. Their findings could contribute to a first-time therapy for fibrosis. The liver is not only the largest…
FWF "Emerging Fields" Grant for Brain Resilience
We congratulate the Consortium of the newly funded "Brain Resilience" grant! CeMM PI Christoph Bock is part of a team of world-renowned scientists that received one of the first "Emerging Fields" grants of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Over five years, the research groups coordinated by Igor Adameyko, MedUni Vienna will receive up to 6 million Euro to investigate brain resilience against disease. The brain of mammals is formed through…
Georg Winter joins global Cancer Grand Challenges team taking on solid tumours in children
The team, which is co-led by Martin Eilers of the University of Würzburg, Germany, and Yaël Mossé of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, US, will receive up to $25m over five years to take on the challenge of solid tumours in children. A global, interdisciplinary team of researchers, including CeMM PI Georg Winter, has been selected to receive a Cancer Grand Challenges award of up to $25m over five years to tackle the solid tumours in children…
Giulio Superti-Furga awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class
On 26 February 2024, Giulio Superti-Furga had the pleasure and honor to receive the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class (Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz I. Klasse für Wissenschaft und Kunst) from the Austrian President Professor Alexander Van der Bellen. The Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class is awarded based on the recommendation of the Federal Government. Established in 1955, this Austrian state…
New System Triggers Cellular Waste Disposal
Established treatments for cancer and other diseases often focus on inhibiting harmful enzymes to mitigate their effects. However, a more innovative approach has emerged: harnessing the cell's natural waste disposal system not just to deactivate but to entirely eradicate these proteins. Researchers at CeMM have already demonstrated the efficacy of this approach through two distinct methods. Now, in collaboration with colleagues from the…
Vienna Science Ball 2024
CeMM members had a great time at the Wiener Ball der Wissenschaften - Vienna Science Ball 2024! Thanks to the organizers for the terrific programme and special focus on climate, fantastic music, a joyful quadrille, the opportunity to be at the Orchesterloge and the chance to have a nice CeMM group picture with a lot of happy faces. The Vienna Science Ball is an exceptional opportunity to mingle with our colleagues and friends from the research…
New therapeutic approach for the treatment of sarcoidosis
A research team led by Georg Stary (Medical University of Vienna and CeMM) has identified a new approach to treating the inflammatory disease sarcoidosis. In a clinical study, the inhibition of a specific signaling pathway showed clear success in the treatment of granulomas in the skin. This opens up new therapeutic paths for sarcoidosis and similar inflammatory diseases. The results were published in the journal Lancet Rheumatology. Sarcoidosis…
