General News & Press

Alejandro Burga, group leader at IMBA, has been selected by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) to be part of the prestigious EMBO Young Investigator Programme. EMBO will support Burga’s research for the next four years, and welcomes him into an international network of more than 700 current and former EMBO Young Investigators, Installation Grantees and Global Investigators. David Haselbach from the neighbouring institute IMP has also been appointed to the programme.

Breakthrough organoid model replicates essential neural network

Heart disease kills 18 million people each year, but the development of new therapies faces a bottleneck: no physiological model of the entire human heart exists – so far. A new multi-chamber organoid that mirrors the heart’s intricate structure enables scientists to advance screening platforms for drug development, toxicology studies, and understanding heart development. The new findings, using heart organoid models developed by Sasha Mendjan’s group at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, are presented in the journal Cell on November 28.

Stem cells can differentiate to replace dead and damaged cells. But how do stem cells decide which type of cell to become in a given situation? Using intestinal organoids, the group of Bon-Kyoung Koo at IMBA and the Institute for Basic Science identified a new gene, Daam1, that plays an essential role, switching on the development of secretory cells in the intestine. This finding, published on November 24 in Science Advances, opens new perspectives in cancer research.

Catarina Martins Costa, a recent graduate from the Knoblich group, was recently honored by the Vienna BioCenter for research that advances an understanding of human brain development and corpus callosum agenesis.

Grant funds research on neurofibromatosis type 1 and associated glioma

Johanna Gassler, a former IMBA student, was awarded the 2023 ÖGMBT Life Science Research Award in the category Basic Science for her publication “Zygotic genome activation by the totipotency pioneer factor Nr5a2”.

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Does the human brain have an Achilles heel that ultimately leads to Autism? With a revolutionizing novel system that combines brain organoid technology and intricate genetics, researchers can now comprehensively test the effect of multiple mutations in parallel and at a single-cell level within human brain organoids. This technology, developed by researchers from the Knoblich group at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Treutlein group at ETH Zurich, permits the identification of vulnerable cell types and gene regulatory networks that underlie autism spectrum disorders. This innovative method offers unparalleled insight into one of the most complex disorders that challenge the human brain with implications that bring autism clinical research much-needed hope. The results were published on September 13 in Nature.

Two paths can diverge… and still lead to the same outcome. In their latest publication, researchers from the Elling lab at IMBA show that two closely related transcription factors kickstart distinct developmental paths to reprogram mouse embryonic stem cells into a convergent neuronal fate. The findings were published on September 2 in Nature Communications.