GSCN NEWS

GSCN & BIH initiate "Dialog Platform for Stem Cell Research"

From the beginning of 2021, the German Stem Cell Network (GSCN) and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) have entered into a close cooperation. The GSCN networks and promotes stem cell research in Germany with the aim of expanding basic research, accelerating the translation of research results into therapies and linking scientists from the various research fields. The GSCN and the BIH are now joining forces to advance translation with the help of stem cell technologies. They are founding the "Dialog Platform Stem Cell Research", which will network and promote national and international stem cell research even more effectively.

 Please find the press release with more information here.

NEW: White Paper:

Organoide - from stem cells to future technologies

Organoids are three-dimensional cellular structures grown from stem cells in vitro. They mimic bodily organs, exhibiting similar cellular compositions and functions.
Organoids can be used for basic research and offer great  promise for medical research in an extremely wide range of fields, such as drug screening, toxicity tests, and individual drug-response.

Through this White Paper, the German Stem Cell Network (GSCN) and the Interdisciplinary  Research Group (IAG) Gene Technology Report of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) hope to raise public awareness of this research field and stimulate an interdisciplinary public debate on organoids.

The GSCN report on organoids offers a tour of the latest developments in this major research field and of current and potential future applications. The focus is on current organoid research projects and companies, with viewpoints from a range of researchers and stakeholders.
This is followed by the IAG’s core statements and recommendations for action on the use of organoids. 

Please find the  download here (German version here)

Additionally the IAG has published a book: Organoide. Ihre Bedeutung für Forschung, Medizin und Gesellschaft (2020)
Herausgegeben von Sina Bartfeld, Hannah Schickl, Cantas Alev, Bon-Kyoung Koo, Anja Pichl, Angela Osterheider, Lilian Marx-Stölting
Forschungsberichte der interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppen der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Band 43
Baden-Baden: Nomos (2020)
The book is online available  here

Excellent research: Award winners 2020 of the GSCN

The „GSCN 2020 Young Investigator Award“ goes to Prof. Dr. Barbara Treutlein of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropolgy, Leipzig, and the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
The „GSCN 2020 Female Scientist Award“ goes to Prof. Dr. Edith Heard, Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg.
The „GSCN 2020 Publication of the Year Award“ goes to Sergiy Velychko and Prof. Dr. Hans R. Schöler of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Munster for the publication “Excluding Oct4 from Yamanaka cocktail unleashes the developmental potential of iPSCs”, 2019, published in the Journal Cell Stem Cell, 2019

Please find the  press release and more information here.

Virtual: 8^th Annual GSCN Conference

The 8th Annual GSCN Conference was unique, because she was virtual and with the novel format participants and organizers created together a great scientific meeting. The conference was held from 23 - 25 September 2020 and offered a three-days-program. 390 participants, 45 selected talks, 22 exhibitors of the industry with 3 gold supporters, 6 silver supporters and 6 bronze supporters took part and contributed with pre-recorded talks and intense online discussions.
International keynote lectures, concurrent sessions, working group discussions, a presidential invite, two poster sessions, meet-the-expert-tables, an ELSA session, and an industry exhibition – everything was transferred into an online-version. New was a highly successful format: the job board, where 31 jobs were offered on the frequently visited site. Also new was the format “Point of discussion”, where Christine Mummery (Leiden, NL) described the interaction of COVID-related research and stem cell research.
Since promotion of junior scientists is an aim of the GSCN, most speakers were selected from the best abstracts that had been submitted. Again, the awardees of the GSCN prizes presented their results during the excellent Presidential Symposium. The program was exciting and covered a wide range of topics of this fast-growing field of research. The keynote presentations were delivered by Christine Mummery, Bertie Göttgens (Cambridge, UK), Shahragim Tajbakhsh (Paris, FR), Jonathan Kimmelman (Montreal, CAN) and Marius Wernig (Stanford, US).

Save the date: We are looking forward to welcoming you at our 9th Annual GSCN Conference from 6 – 8 Oct. 2021 in Ulm!

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Hot off the press:

Check out the GSCN annual magazine 2019/20