Nils Haep successfully applied for funding from the ECRT Consumable Grant - Advanced Scientists. In his project, Nils is investigating the function of a cysteine-type endopeptidase and described mutations in the endopeptidase in induced pluripotent stem cell derived hepatocytes and their influence on Adiponutrin induced NAFLD.

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Dr. Assal Daneshgar, PhD successfully applied for the BIH Charité Junior Clinician Scientist Program (JCSP). This program allows clinicians to dedicate 20 percent of their working hours to research for two years.
She will concentrate on her latest project "Human-inspired augmentable hydrogels with advanced biological functions for in vitro cell culture and liver surgery".

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Cao Zhong Jing Jin under the supervision of Dr. med. Matthäus Felsenstein successfully applied for the BIH Medical Student Research Stipend on their project “Deciphering the molecular determinants for the transformation of high-grade pancreatic duct dysplasia to invasive carcinoma by single-cell transcriptomics”. She is conducting a cutting-edge research project merging molecular data with histological information in collaboration with the BIH core facilities for single-cell genomics (Dr. Thomas Conrad) and intelligent imaging (Prof. Dr. Christian Conrad). Using modern single-cell- and spatial transcriptomics on pancreatic precursor and carcinoma samples, the project aims at defining molecular signatures that drive dysplastic cells.

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Dr. Matthäus Felsenstein successfully applied for funding from the Else Kröner Fresenius Stiftung (EKFS) for his project “The functional role and clinical relevance of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in pancreatic adenocarcinoma”. In close collaboration with the excellence group around Professor Anton Henssen, he is aiming at improved understanding of unique genomic patterns as a results of complex chromosomal rearrangements in pancreatic adenocarcinoma that could drive its aggressive behavior. He will use state-of-the art three-dimensional tissue culture to enrich for neoplastic cells from primary PDAC specimen and subsequently perform genome analyses to identify samples that harbor extrachromosomal DNA. The clinical impact of these chromosomal structures will be explored by clinical correlation analyses and therapy response in vitro.

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With a DFG Walter-Benjamin grant Dr. med. Friederike Martin will join the laboratory of Transplant Surgery Research at Harvard under the direction of Professor Stefan G. Tullius in Boston to investigate the role of biological sex for transplantation outcome.

Influences of donor and recipient sex on transplantation outcome have been described manifold, as well as an influence of sex hormones on the innate and adaptive immune response. So far, research, investigating the impact of sex hormones and different sex- and age-dependent sex-hormone levels on alloimmune response after solid organ transplantation is lacking. The aim of the project “Sex as a biological Variable in Alloimmunity” is, to delineate the impact of sex hormones and especially estrogens and age-dependent changes in estrogen-levels on alloimmune response after allogenic transplantation.  The project is based on the publication “Recipient sex and estradiol levels affect transplant outcomes in an age-specific fashion” published in the AJT in 2021 by the workgroup of Prof. Tullius.

Friederike, who already received the Sanofi Women in Transplantation fellowship grant for research in gender and sex in transplantation in 2021, will work as a Postdoc on this project in the Tullius Lab for an expected 2 years period, starting in January 2023.


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The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funds the project "Tangible reality - skilful interaction of user hands and fingers with real tools in mixed reality worlds (GreifbAR)" – a cooperation of the Augmented Vision group of the DFKI (Prof. Dr. Didier Stricker), the Department of Psychology and Human-Machine Interaction of the University of Passau (Prof. Dr. Susanne Mayr), the company NMY Mixed Reality Communication (Christoph Lenk), and the Experimental Surgery of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Prof. Dr. Igor M. Sauer).

The goal of the GreifbAR project is to make extended reality (XR) worlds, including virtual (VR) and mixed reality (MR), tangible and graspable by allowing users to interact with real and virtual objects with their bare hands. Hand accuracy and dexterity is paramount for performing precise tasks in many fields, but the capture of hand-object interaction in current XR systems is woefully inadequate. Current systems rely on hand-held controllers or capture devices that are limited to hand gestures without contact with real objects. GreifbAR solves this limitation by proposing a sensing system that detects both the full hand grip including hand surface and object pose when users interact with real objects or tools. This sensing system will be integrated into a mixed reality training simulator.

Competent handling of instruments and suture material is the basis of every surgical activity. The main instruments used in surgery are in the hands of the surgical staff. Their work is characterised by the targeted use of a large number of instruments that have to be operated and controlled in different ways. Until now, surgical knotting techniques have been learned by means of personal instruction by experienced surgeons, blackboard images and video-based tutorials. A training and teaching concept based on the acquisition of finger movement does not yet exist in surgical education and training. Learning surgical account techniques through participant observation and direct instruction by experienced surgeons is cost-intensive and hardly scalable. This type of training is increasingly reaching its limits in daily clinical practice, which can be attributed in particular to the changed economic, social and regulatory conditions in surgical practice. Students and trainees as well as specialist staff in further training are therefore faced with the problem of applying and practising acquired theoretical knowledge in a practice-oriented manner. Text- and image-based media allow scalable theoretical knowledge acquisition independent of time and place. However, gestures and work steps can only be passively observed and subsequently imitated. Moreover, the learning success cannot be quantitatively measured and verified.

The aim of the Charité's sub-project is therefore to develop a surgical application scenario for Mixed/Augmented Reality (MR/AR) for the spatial guidance and verifying recording of complex fine motor finger movements for the creation of surgical knots, the practical implementation and technical testing of the developed concept within the framework of a demonstrator, and the evaluation of the usability of the system for use in a clinical context.

The Berliner Krebsgesellschaft will fund two very interesting research projects by Dr. Linda Feldbrügge and Dr. Karl Hillebrandt in collaboration with Dr. Björn Papke.

"The influence of decellularised tumour matrix heterogeneity in relation to KRAS/MAPK inhibition of in vitro colorectal liver metastases." PI: Dr. Karl Hillebrandt and Dr. Björn Papke (Dept. of Pathology)

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, with approximately 900,000 annual deaths. 30-50% of patients develop colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) during their disease. More than 50% of these tumors have mutations in the KRAS oncogene, making them usually poorly treatable. Despite multimodal therapy concepts have improved the outcome of these patients, a large proportion of patients suffer a recurrence of their disease. For better therapeutic concepts, we need to better understand the tumor biology and metastatic mechanisms of these diseases. In vitro models, such as two-dimensional cell culture, are primarily used for this purpose. These models can only reflect the physiological complexity to a limited extent. Recently, it was shown that the use of organ-specific and tumor-specific extracellular matrix (ECM) has an impact on the behavior of human CRC cell lines. Culture of cell lines with decellularized matrix resulted in cells adopting a metastatic cell state and forming significantly more metastases in a mouse model than cells cultured on plastic or collagen. The goal of our project is to study the growth (with and without inhibition of the RAS/MAPK signaling pathway) of patient-derived tumor organoids growing on different decellularized metastatic matrices (dMM) and decellularized liver matrices (dLM). These studies of tumor matrix heterogeneity are essential to define which starting materials, for in vitro modeling of our three-dimensional tumor organoid culture, can be used to develop the most physiological, personalized dLM/dMM-based CRLM in vitro model possible. Based on these results, we plan to conduct small-scale therapy evaluations for personalized tumor therapy using our in vitro dLM/dMM-based CRLM in the near future.

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Dr. med. M. Felsenstein receives a grant provided by the Berliner Krebsgesellschaft e.V. for his project "Deciphering the molecular determinants of pancreatic duct dysplasia by analysis of single-cell transcriptomics (RNAseq) in precursor lesions".

Besides great advances in the molecular and genetic understanding of pancreatic duct adenocarcinoma (PDAC), this tumor entity remains particularly aggressive with dismal prognosis. Recent single-cell sequencing studies underline the eminent urgency to understand tumor heterogeneity in the setting of PDAC. More detailed knowledge about the molecular mechanisms of pancreatic cancer evolution, carcinogenesis and heterogeneity could direct ideas for earlier detection and more effective targeted therapies, also preventing disease recurrence. Future therapeutic approaches in precision medicine will likely focus on the disease relevant sub-populations, specifically driving cancer progression, dissemination and exerting tumor escape mechanisms. In-depth transcriptomic data of single carcinoma environmental cells and respective cell clusters may help to discover novel biomarkers, which can be clinically instrumented for earlier detection and putatively increase the fraction of patients, amenable to curatively intended therapies. This study aims to analyze sorted single cells of macro-dissected precursor and cancerous lesions of the pancreas by single nuclei RNA sequencing (snRNAseq). In this feasibility study, we will include 10 patients, who will undergo resection of the pancreas due to “worrisome” or malignant lesions. We will perform in-depth transcriptomic analysis of pancreatic dysplasia in order to broaden our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of pancreatic carcinogenesis.

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