Scarless wound healing: what we can learn from spiny mice

An ERK-dependent molecular switch antagonizes fibrosis and promotes regeneration

28-Apr-2023 - Injury response after a deep skin wound, myocardial infarction, stroke, spinal cord injury or lung infection mostly yields fibrotic tissue, resulting in permanent scars and organ function failure. It is estimated that around 50% of people die from a disease that involves scarring. Currently, ...

Hammock for brain organoids

Novel microelectrode array system enables long-term cultivation and electrophysiological analyses

14-Apr-2023 - Brain organoids are self-organizing tissue cultures grown from patient cell-derived induced pluripotent stem cells. They form tissue structures that resemble the brain in vivo in many ways. This makes brain organoids interesting for studying both normal brain development and for the development ...

More than microscopes can show

Computer simulations visualize how an essential stem cell protein opens wrapped DNA

23-Sep-2022 - A key protein for converting adult stem cells into cells that resemble embryonic stem cells has been visualized in unprecedented detail by an international team of researchers around Hans Schöler and Vlad Cojocaru of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster. By combing ...

First synthetic tissue model developed in which blood vessels can grow

02-Aug-2021 - A research team headed by biomedical engineer Dr Britta Trappmann from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, has developed a cell culture system in which, for the first time, a functional blood vessel system is able to grow within a framework made of synthetic ...

Nucleosome breathing from atomistic time snapshots

Computer simulations visualize in atomic detail how DNA opens while wrapped around proteins

08-Jun-2021 - Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht (The Netherlands) and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster (Germany) used computer simulations to reveal in atomic detail how a short piece of DNA opens while it is tightly wrapped around the proteins that package our ...

Midbrain organoids for automated chemical screening and disease research

Max Planck Innovation licenses process for the generation of organ-like tissue aggregates to biotech company StemoniX

05-Nov-2020 - Sometimes hundreds of thousands of potential therapeutics need to be tested in large-scale, fully automated experiments to identify a single effective drug. Most compounds do not work as desired, and some are even toxic. Since the development of the induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) Cell technology ...

New tool helps to ‘spot the difference’ in genome organisation

This enables scientists to track down causes of diseases more quickly

22-Oct-2020 - The way DNA is organized in the cell nucleus is very important for the normal development and function of the cell. A mutation that affects the packaging of the genetic material in the cell nucleus can lead to developmental disorders or diseases such as cancer. A team of scientists from the Max ...

Generation of mouse induced pluripotent stem cells succeeds better without Oct4

11-Nov-2019 - Quality of induced pluripotent stem cells is dramatically enhanced by omitting what was thought to be the most crucial reprogramming factor. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster showed that Oct4, a factor most commonly used for reprogramming, is detrimental ...

Learning from the linker

New study sheds light on cellular reprogramming

07-Feb-2013 - Mature cells can be reprogrammed to pluripotency and thus regain the ability to divide and differentiate into specialized cell types. Although these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) represent a milestone in stem cell research, many of the biochemical processes that underlie ...

Playing it safe

Max Planck researchers have succeeded for the first time in reprogramming clearly defined adult cells into pluripotent stem cells - directly and without viruses

10-Jul-2009 - Kinarm Ko and Hans Schöler’s team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine have succeeded for the first time in culturing a clearly defined cell type from the testis of adult mice and converting these cells into pluripotent stem cells without introduced genes, viruses or ...