Metabolic diseases

On August 1, 2023, Sofia Forslund will take up a W3 Professorship in Applied Microbiology at Charité. She will continue her scientific work at the ECRC, which involves close collaboration with researchers from the Max Delbrück Center and Charité.

Using single-cell technologies, Maike Sander and colleagues have observed a shift in the relative abundance of the two subtypes of pancreatic beta cells as type 2 diabetes unfolds. This knowledge could be leveraged to find novel drugs, they report in “Nature Genetics.”

Cells continually renew themselves by “digesting” unused cellular material. This mechanism is called autophagy – an area in which immunologist Katja Simon has specialized. She has devised ways to use it to slow down the aging of immune cells.

Dominik Müller investigates how lifestyle affects the molecular regulation processes in the body – such as how a high-sodium diet impacts the immune system and cardiovascular health. In doing so, he deliberately transcends the boundaries between disciplines.

Regulatory T cells ensure that immune responses happen in a controlled way. But eating too much salt weakens these cells’ energy supply, thus rendering them dysfunctional for a while. This may have implications for autoimmunity, an international team – including Dominik Müller – reports in “Cell Metabolism.”

Changes in the gut microbiome can ultimately lead to cardiovascular disease. Yet some of the alterations appear to normalize in chronic conditions, a team led by ECRC researcher Sofia Forslund reports in "Nature Medicine". This finding may have clinical implications.

Neuroscience is one of Berlin’s strongest fields of research. The Berlin Brains lecture series at Urania shows the breadth and depth of this research expertise in the capital city – this year under the theme “Junior Meets Senior.” The MDC’s Thomas Willnow and Anna Löwa are kicking off the series.

Bone regeneration, dynamic hydrogels and the novel coronavirus – these three topics are currently being researched by MDC scientists in two new Collaborative Research Centres and as part of the COVID-19 Focus Funding initiative of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Alzheimer’s is linked to metabolic dysfunction. Thomas Willnow is looking for disruptions in the balance of fats in the brain that accelerate the breakdown of neurons – and has discovered important risk factors that offer new therapeutic approaches for treating Alzheimer’s at an early stage.

A protein in the cell envelope influences the rate of fatty acid uptake in cells. This is reported by MDC researchers in the journal PNAS. This process also appears to be altered in overweight people.