GSCN NEWS
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: 8th 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!
Hot off the press:
Check out the GSCN annual magazine 2019/20
"Stem Cell Research and Diseases I"
Read it online 
here (with download link).
Statement of the GSCN
Offers of unproven stem cell therapies for COVID-19 disease caused by the corona virus SARS-CoV-2
With the spreading COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need for new treatments, especially for critically ill patients. Clinical trials, such as experiments with SARS-COV-2 vaccines, are in full swing. However, there is a significant increase in unproven and untested therapies worldwide, including unproven treatments based on "stem cells". The German Stem Cell Network (GSCN) as well as international scientific societies such as EuroStemCell (Statement), the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR Statement) and the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy (ISCT Statement) strongly oppose the irresponsible offer of unproven cell-based treatments, especially in the context of such a severe pandemic. Affected individuals and families are urged to talk to healthcare professionals to obtain the best available information on COVID-19 disease and treatment options.
Analogue & digital exhibition
Stem cells: cells for life– 10 Posters (in German) to download
The GSCN has developed an exhibition for institutes, universities and teachers - 10 posters on topics of current stem cell research like diabetes, organoids, skin, ethics and many more. Each poster is accompanied by a website with videos, factsheets and an interactive quiz to deepen the information.
The highlight: The posters are available as DINA 0 format on the GSCN website - anyone can download them, print them out as posters or roll-ups - and immediately has a complete, analogue and digitally enhanced, exhibition on stem cells, research and application at hand.
Link to the website (only in German): Stammzellen - Zellen fürs Leben