On 4 October 2024, the CeMM Outing took place. Each year we try to combine social activities with an informative and educational approach.

In times of escalating conflicts in the world, we thought it would be important to reflect on Austrian, European and World history, and went to the Vienna Arsenal which houses the Austrian Museum of Military History. We learned that a multi-nation multi-ethnic multi-religion multi-language empire had a detailed military apparatus over centuries, and wanted to understand how it “slipped” into two major global wars.

Soon we will also have a S.M.A.R.T. Lecture on "World in pieces. Elections, wars,…

Congratulations to CeMM Adjunct PI Miriam Unterlass, who will take over the leadership of Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg. 

The chemist and materials scientist, who has previously taught as Professor of Solid State Chemistry at the University of Konstanz and the TU Vienna, brings her focus on the synthesis of new functional materials to Würzburg, enriching the portfolio of the Fraunhofer ISC and the University of Würzburg, where she will simultaneously take on the Chair of Chemical Technology of Materials Synthesis. Nonetheless, Miriam remains closely connected to CeMM as an Adjunct PI.

With previous academic…

We received the sad news that architect Ernst M. Kopper passed away. The CeMM building was designed by architect Kopper who created a structure full of light with much open space for the needs and comfort of modern molecular biology laboratories, for the work and life of scientists, as well as room to house sophisticated high-tech scientific equipment.

Ernst M. Kopper was born 1945 in Schulberg near Graz. After studying architecture at Graz University of Technology he spent some diploma and internship years in Rome and Munich. Since 1975 he has lived in Vienna. Since 1984 he worked as an independent architect, but also in co-operations,…

The Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) is further expanding its focus on life sciences by opening an institute for Biomedical Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on a € 150 million funding from the German non-profit Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation (BIS). The new institute, called AITHYRA, will make revolutionary advances in biomedicine by developing AI-based research approaches. It will make a significant contribution to the advancement of human health with the knowledge gained from working with AI. 

The foundation and OeAW were able to win Michael Bronstein, DeepMind Professor at the University of Oxford, as founding director of the…

A new research group on multiscale mechanobiology of tissue organization at CeMM: We wish Abdel Rahman Abdel Fattah a great start into this new role as Principal Investigator and Faculty member at CeMM! 

Abdel’s research interest lies in understanding how cells navigate a mechanical roadmap in order to initiate, achieve, and maintain tissue organization in health and disease. His lab will lead this research direction by building new bioengineering tools, profiling transcriptomic landscapes, and bridging the multicellular and molecular dimensions of mechanoregulation.

The group will investigate trauma-induced tissue disorganization, with a…

The artificial intelligence (AI) model GPT-4, known from its application in ChatGPT, shows impressive capabilities in biomedical research and can be used in many ways for simulations. A simulator developed at MedUni Vienna and CeMM and based on GPT-4 shows increased accuracy in classifying the importance of genes in cancer cells, as well as in the prognosis of cancer patients. The results of the study were published in the journal Computers in Biology and Medicine.

Large language models such as GPT-4 have proven to be extremely useful in various fields, including biomedicine. A research team from MedUni Vienna's Institute of Artificial…

Despite the significant increase in sexually transmitted diseases in recent years, there is currently no vaccine available against common bacterial pathogens such as chlamydia. In the search for ways to prevent infection, a research team from MedUni Vienna and CeMM has identified the active substance pentamidine as a promising candidate for the prophylaxis of chlamydial infections and possibly other bacterial sexually transmitted diseases. The study was recently published in the scientific journal Cell Reports Medicine.

In order to find previously unknown substances for the treatment of chlamydial infections, the scientific team led by Georg…

Giulio Superti-Furga has been awarded the 2024 Lennart Philipson Award at the EMBL 50th Anniversary Scientific Symposium in Heidelberg. The Lennart Philipson Award was created to honour EMBL’s second Director General, Lennart Philipson (1982-1993). The Award recognises outstanding and validated contributions in translational research and/or technology innovation across the complete spectrum of life sciences.

Giulio Superti-Furga received the award for his research achievements, for the methods he developed and shared with the life sciences community, for the companies he had created, and the leaders in science and beyond he has trained…

Disease-causing proteins can be removed from the cell through targeted protein degradation. For this, the protein must be connected to one of the approximately 600 endogenous so-called ubiquitin ligases. So far, clinical success has only been achieved with two of these ligases. A team of researchers at CeMM, led by Georg Winter, has now discovered an adapter for a new ligase, potentially significantly expanding the range of medical applications. Furthermore, the team managed to elucidate the molecular mechanism of this adapter, which could lead to a new general strategy for targeted protein degradation. The study was published in Nature…

Nightshade plants produce a diverse array of compounds with therapeutic potential. Researchers at CeMM have now identified an artificial variant inspired by the Withanolides group that acts highly specifically against leukemia cells. Using state-of-the-art chemical and genetic high-throughput analyses, the team led by Georg Winter not only confirmed its effectiveness but also elucidated its mechanism of action: the molecule disrupts the cholesterol metabolism of tumor cells. The study's findings were published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology (DOI 10.1038/s41589-024-01614-4).

While some nightshade plants, such as potatoes, tomatoes, or…