Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)

In neuromuscular diseases, neurons and muscle cells stop communicating properly. Researchers led by Mina Gouti can now model this in 2D in a culture dish. Writing about their findings in “Nature Communications”, they say the new model promises to revolutionize high-throughput drug screening studies.

RNA molecules travel long distances through nerve cells. To reach their destination, they need one thing more than any other – a long life – as a research team led by Marina Chekulaeva from MDC-BIMSB reports in the journal “Molecular Cell.”

Researchers suspect that neurodegenerative diseases occur when messenger RNA (mRNA) goes astray in the neuron. With a new method, Marina Chekulaeva is able to identify “zipcodes” that assign a destination to mRNAs. She has now presented her method in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Organoids have to be fed and cared for continuously so that they can mature. So far, it is mostly a manual process – not suitable for industrial drug screening. Now, the European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Mina Gouti a Proof of Concept Grant to tackle scalability and reproducibility.

Errors in cellular RNA metabolism are dangerous for nerve cells. For her work in this area, Marina Chekulaeva has now been accepted into the DFG Heisenberg program.

Mina Gouti uses stem cells to create three-dimensional cell structures called organoids that closely resemble some aspects of real human tissues. The organoids are well suited for testing new drugs to combat neuromuscular diseases and for developing personalized therapies to treat severely ill patients.

A team led by MDC researcher Ana Pombo has deciphered the 3D structure of the genome in three cell types of the mouse brain. They not only discovered specific folding patterns but also found that very long genes almost completely lose their compact folded structure when most at work, as they report in “Nature”.

In December 2020, biophysicist Melissa Birol joined the MDC as a new junior group leader to investigate the behavior and function of disordered proteins in brain cells.

The European Research Council (ERC) awarded Dr. Mina Gouti a €2.8 million Consolidator Grant to further develop miniature neuromuscular organoids for studying neuromuscular development and diseases. It was the second honor in as many weeks; she was also named an EMBO Young Investigator for her work.

The NeuroNet1.0 interactome network reveals a wealth of novel proteins that could be involved in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. Professor Erich Wanker’s MDC research group recently published a paper on this topic in the journal Cell Reports.