We are happy to introduce the CeMM Research Report 2018 to you.

Learn more about the Science, Life and Facts of CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In this report we not only present you our scientific highlights, we took the discussions of the Directors, CeMM Principal Investigators and our Adjunct PIs outside of CeMM into the city of Vienna. We hope you enjoy the little tour of “CeMM-related” Kaffeehäuser/coffeehouses as a stage for multicultural communication. Rather than thinking of researchers as being confined to an ivory tower, relate to us as members of civic society, sitting next to…

Congratulations to Kaan Boztug (CCRI and LBI-RUD Director, CeMM Adjunct PI and Associate MedUni Wien Professor), Elisabeth Salzer and Bernd Boidol (former CeMM PhD Students) for winning three individual Johann Wilhelm Ritter von Mannagetta Awards!

Kaan received the Mannagetta Medicine Prize as recognition for his research on inherited defects of the immune system, and Lisi and Bernd the Mannagetta Advancement Awards for their excellent publications and PhD studies in the field of medical research.

Salzer E. et al. RASGRP1 deficiency causes immunodeficiency with impaired cytoskeletal dynamics. Nat Immunol. doi: 10.1038/ni.3575.

Boidol B. et…

On March 7, the CCRI announced that Kaan Boztug took over his new role as Scientific Director of the Children's Cancer Research Institute.

As physician-scientist and leading expert in primary immunodeficiency and hematological malignancies, Kaan is a perfect choice for the directorship of this renowned research institution in paediatric oncology and we hope that his appointment will further strengthen the links between our organizations. Kaan joined CeMM as Principal Investigator in 2011, and has been pursuing a steep career ever since. Two ERC Grants, several prizes and awards, an impressive publication track record, and successful national…

From February 18-20, 2019, the annual Scientific Recess of CeMM with representatives from each research group and our facilities took place in Waidhofen a.d. Ybbs.

Thank you to the organizers Andreas Villunger and Christoph Binder and to all the participants from CeMM and the Adjunct groups, who contributed with their presentations of new ideas and with lively discussions to a successful meeting.

The overall topic of the 2019 recess was to identify translational opportunities for the next 5 years, agree on emerging topics and themes, and to look for new possibilities for interactions within CeMM.

We thank our special guest Michael Sixt…

Congratulations to Nuno Maulide, Professor for Organic Synthesis at the University of Vienna, Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and CeMM Adjunct Principal Investigator, for receiving the Ignaz L. Lieben Award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences! As a scientist with a broadly documented expertise in state-of-the-art innovations in organic synthesis, and a great talent and dedication for science communication and teaching, Nuno Maulide highly deserves this prestigious award and recognition.

Nuno Maulide’s research mostly focused on unusual or "unconventional" reactivity profiles of organic compounds with a particular…

Targeted drugs are a cornerstone of personalized medicine, yet come with important drawbacks. They restrain disease progression – but rarely eradicate the cancer. Patients therefore need to take the drugs essentially forever, exposing them to severe side effects and incurring high costs for the healthcare system. Combination therapies could potentially overcome these limitations. A study by scientists from CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the Medical University of Vienna shows how epigenetic analysis and automated microscopy help prioritize new drug combinations for…

An important group of genes that is frequently mutated in cancer consists of kinases, which mediate communication within cells. As enzymes, kinases are promising candidates to target for cancer therapy and as such, by identifying interactions between kinases and chemotherapeutic drugs the treatment for cancer could be improved. A research team, led by CeMM PI Joanna Loizou, together with colleagues from the Francis Crick Institute and King´s College, London has now established a catalog of the human kinome in response to different types of genotoxic stress.

Chemotherapy is one of the standard treatments for cancer, and one of the main…

Facial tumors of Tasmanian devils belong to the extremely rare cases of transmissible cancers. Nevertheless, they are highly interesting for biomedical research, as they allow the study of fundamental properties of cancer cells and their interaction with the host´s immune system. Scientists at CeMM, the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine, the Medical University of Vienna and the LBI for Cancer Research were able to elucidate key molecular mechanisms that are crucial for the transmissibility of the tumor cells. The study „The ERBB-STAT3 Axis Drives Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease” was published in Cancer Cell, on 14 January 2019,…

Thank you to our collaborators, partners and friends for all the support and dedication to science in 2018! CeMM wishes you enjoyable holidays, and a successful start into the New Year! 

Population trends and the global sustainable development goals

The 9th S.M.A.R.T. Lecture held by Professor Wolfgang Lutz, Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU), was a plea for education. Particularly female education not only connects to a decrease of child mortality and to an increase of life expectancy, it proves to be key to the alleviation of poverty.

In his talk, Wolfgang Lutz proclaimed that essentially people are not very different all over the world. However, we face a universal development of “demographic modernization” with countries currently at different stages…