CeMM Alumni Gathering 2023
From 7-8 May 2023 the annual CeMM Alumni event took place in Vienna. We started with a nice, informal Dinner at the old AKH campus on Sunday, and continued with an Alumni Gathering on Monday at CeMM. This included an update of activities by the Alumni Board, mentor-mentee meetings during the day, and an interesting workshop on decision making with guest speaker Jafar Rezaei, from the Delft University of Technology NL. In the evening Alumnae and…
CeMM Research Report 2022: On the shoulders of giants
Making progress, innovating, and finding solutions to global challenges requires extensive and intensive basic research across multiple fields. To make new discoveries, we must put in the effort, exertion, and brainpower required. But research does not simply start and end. Rather, we insert ourselves into a chain of knowledge seekers. The foundations of our present research and wealth were laid already by many people in the past. The CeMM…
Visit of Minister Martin Polaschek
On 31 March 2023, Prof. Dr. Martin Polaschek, the Austrian Minister for Education, Science and Research visited CeMM for the first time. Minister Polaschek met the CeMM Directors Giulio Superti-Furga and Anita Ender and spoke to the new Principal Investigators Laura de Rooij and André Rendeiro. He also met CeMM PI Stefan Kubicek and visited the CeMM Molecular Discovery Platform. We are thankful for the visit and are also grateful that Minister…
CeMM receives the Innovation Award 2023
For the third time, the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is one of the winners of the Innovation Awards 2023 of the Austrian Society for Consumer Studies. On this occasion, CeMM has received recognition for its outstanding “Innovation Management”, and also achieved a top-5 ranking in organic chemistry and pharmaceuticals, as well as a top-10 ranking in the biotechnology field. These distinctions are…
The CeMM & Angelini Ventures Healthy Lifespan Expansion Initiative
CeMM and Angelini Ventures are joining forces to support CeMM Principal Investigators Laura de Rooij and André Rendeiro in critical lifespan expansion initiatives leveraging a novel academic/entrepreneurial dual-track program. De Rooij and Rendeiro, in collaboration with their teams, will lead an original research program on healthy lifespan expansion. In parallel, they will collaborate on venture creation based on scientific and business…
Visit of the Italian Ambassador H.E. Stefano Beltrame at CeMM
On 16 March 2023, CeMM was honored to receive the Italian Ambassador H.E. Stefano Beltrame, the First Secretary Valeria Gravagno, and the Scientific Counselor Amedeo Staiano from the Italian Embassy in Austria. We took the opportunity to present CeMM, our infrastructure as well as our research highlights, interests, and achievements. Our guests were welcomed by CeMM Scientific Director Giulio Superti-Furga, who accompanied them through the…
Open Postdoc positions at CeMM
We are recruiting a group of postdocs who are eager to pursue ground-breaking biomedical research, and we will help them to establish themselves as future scientific leaders. This postdoc program is designed to prepare postdoctoral researchers for a successful ERC Starting Grant application or equivalent and for an independent research career in top research organizations in Europe and around the world. The postdoc program is based at the CeMM…
Drug discovery: New method identifies E3-specific degraders for targeted therapies
For many years, the team of Principal Investigator Georg Winter at CeMM has been researching the development of Targeted Protein Degraders: a new generation of drugs that achieve greater therapeutic success through the targeted degradation of harmful, pathogenic proteins. In their current study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), the researchers present a new method for the identification of molecules that could act…
Stem cell transplantation: Processes for the restoration of the immune system discovered
In stem cell transplants, which are used for the treatment of leukaemia, the patient's haematopoietic system is eliminated and replaced by haematopoietic cells from donors. Even though the amount of complications occurring in this process is steadily decreasing due to medical progress, the exact mechanisms for the restoration of the immune system in these patients have not yet been conclusively clarified. Researchers at MedUni Vienna, the CeMM…
Single-cell sequencing on granulomas opens new therapeutic approaches for sarcoidosis
Granulomas are an accumulation of immune cells in the tissue, often the result of an overactive immune response. Granulomas contribute to several inflammatory systemic diseases such as sarcoidosis, berylliosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. For the first time, scientists at CeMM, the Medical University of Vienna and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases have thoroughly characterized granulomas in the skin in immense detail.…
From octopus to elephant: a molecular zoo of epigenetics
Christoph Bock’s team at the CeMM established a catalog of DNA methylation across 580 animal species. These data enabled a detailed dissection of the evolution of epigenetic regulation and the epigenome. The new study, published in Nature Communications, shows that the characteristic DNA methylation signatures of animal genomes are evolutionarily very old, having emerged long before the first mammals. Surprisingly, DNA methylation in starfish and…
Season Greetings 2022
2022 has been a special year for all of us, and we would like to thank our CeMM members and collaborators for their effort and dedication to research. After 15 years of pioneering work, we wanted to see our achievements, our constant development, our innovations in medicine also in our corporate identity. We unveiled a new corporate design and claim that reflects our CeMM principles and goals to improve healthcare. Because Science is our…
Tackling high-risk leukemia: Austrian Science Fund FWF promotes precision oncology at St. Anna CCRI
The innovative "ExTrAct AML" project, funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, goes beyond established frontiers to investigate acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in children and adolescents. Individual patient profiles should provide early information on the causes of disease progression or treatment resistance – and how to take countermeasures in time. In contrast to previous approaches, these profiles not only include comprehensive (epi)genetic…
Blocking DNA production in cancer therapy by targeting POLΘ
In a recent study, researchers from Joanna Loizou’s group from CeMM and the Medical University of Vienna investigated the POLΘ enzyme and the role it plays in DNA repair. Inhibiting POLΘ represents a new approach for developing specific therapies, in particular for patients with BRCA1 mutations. The study, published in Cell Reports, shows for the first time that POLΘ fills the gaps in single-stranded DNA that excessively occur in a…
CeMM Scientific Advisory Board Meeting 2022
On strategic and scientific questions, CeMM of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is advised by a board of international top-scientists. On November 13-16, 2022, the CeMM Scientific Advisory Board Meeting took place in Waidhofen an der Ybbs (Austria). We thank our Scientific Advisory Board members Carl-Henrik Heldin, Ewan Birney, Aaron Ciechanover, Richard Flavell, Janet Kelso, Hidde Ploegh and Derek Tan for their precious time, fruitful…
