On the 14th and 15th of March the final event of the bavarian research network BioSysNet was successfully held in the BioSysM building in Großhadern. Next to our office at the event hall Römerforum we could wellcome the members of the ministry, the scientific coordinator Prof. Domdey, the advisory board and the project investigators of the Biosysnet research groups.

Also other scientists of various disciplines attended the event, so all together we had more than 100 interested visitors.

To begin the event there was a welcome by Prof. Domdey and Mrs Schmid of the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts followed by the keynote speech of Prof. Cramer. Further speakers were Prof. Lamond, Prof. Stoffel and Prof. Klingmüller who also hold the chair of the advisory board.

As a highlight of the evening we could win magician Marc Gassert to show his magic show. The evening finished with a luxuriant dinner and inspiring converations.

The next day the evaluation of the junior research groups startet with their 30 minute presentations about their work and results within the Biosysnet projects.

After lunch also the associated junior and senior groups were presenting their results by 3-4 minute pitches.

For the end of the afternoon Prof. Domdey, Prof. Klingmüller, Prof. Engelhardt, Prof. Bosserhoff, Prof. Winner und Prof. Madlgot together in irder to discuss the topic " the future of research funding in Bavaria" in a penal and plenary discussion.

Further informations, the Agenda and all the fotos you can find here...

The research group of Prof. Theis has recently developed and published a program that is able to help manage enormous datasets. The software, named Scanpy, is a candidate for analyzing the Human Cell Atlas. “It’s about analyzing gene-expression data of a large number of individual cells,” explains lead author Alex Wolf of the Institute of Computational Biology (ICB) at Helmholtz Zentrum München. He developed Scanpy together with his colleague Philipp Angerer in the Machine Learning Group of Prof. Dr. Dr. Fabian Theis. In addition to his position at Helmholtz Zentrum, Theis is also a professor of mathematical modelling of biological systems at the Technical University of Munich. “New technical advances generate several orders of magnitude more data with a correspondingly greater information content,” Theis says. “However, the historically evolved software infrastructure for gene-expression analysis simply wasn’t designed to cope with the new challenges. New analytic methods are therefore needed.” 

Technologically, the application is a trailblazing development: Whereas biostatistics programs are traditionally written in the programming language R, Scanpy is based on the Python language, the dominant language in the machine learning community.  Another new feature is that graph-based algorithms lie at the heart of Scanpy. Unlike the usual approach of regarding cells as points in a coordinate system within gene-expression space, the algorithms use a graph-like coordinate system. Instead of characterizing a single cell by the expression value for thousands of genes, the system simply characterizes cells by identifying their closest neighbors – very much like the connections in social networks. 

We would like to congratulate Prof. Theis and his research group on this oustanding achievement. You can find the complete press release here. The complete publication is available for download. 

With the m4 award, the Free State of Bavaria supports innovative products, technologies and services of young ventures which decisively drive the development of "personalized medicine". This year's m4 Award goes to five Bavarian research teams, whose biomedical and application-driven projects have potential for a business formation. The m4 Award consists in a prize money of 500.000 Euro for a funding period of two years, in order to further develop and validate the project idea and prepare for a spin-off company. However, in addition to the financial assistance, the scientists can count on active support through BioM, the organizer of the m4 contest, as well as other partners of the innovative landscape of Bavaria, the socalled "Gründerland Bayern".

We are especially happy to announce that BioSysNet scientist Prof. Dr. Anja Bosserhoff together with Prof. Dr. Claus Hellerbrand from the Fridrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg have been chosen for this year's m4 Award for their project "Development of an orally administered inhibitor for the therapy of malignant melanoma" and would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations. 

For more details on the m4 award and the award-winning project of Prof. Bosserhoff and Prof. Hellerbrand, please read here...

The director of the research network BioSysNet Dr. Ulrike Kaltenhauser wrote about the advantages of collaborations within research networks and the role of relations and contacts in the workplace published in the Summeressays of the Laborjournal. The successful business woman and graduated biologist shares her yearslong experience founding and managing the research networks BayGene, BioSysNet, For Planta and BayKliF. She describes skillfully the benefits of cultivating relations and establishing cooperations. Additionally she explains how synergy-effects of network projects contribute to higher yield and faster goal attainment.

Here you can read her article "The sectret of relationships: Why do networks simplify life and carreer.

BioSysNet junior group leader, Dr. Fabiana Perocchi, has recently published an article in Molecular Cell regarding the development of a high-troughput assay that selects for small-molecule modulators specific to the human mitochondrial calcium uniporter complex. We would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to this great success! To access this publication, please click here.

Once again, BioSysNet took part at the open house of the biocenter at the LMU. A diverse programme with short presentations and different topic workshops gave profound insight into the many different research areas and departments at the faculty of biology. There were guided laboratory tours, poster walls, stalls and booths of all research areas, an interactive quiz as well as tours through the green houses. The complete programme can be found here. 

We are happy to announce a new publication by Prof. Dr. Gunter Meister, one of the BioSysNet senior project leaders, and would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations! Published on 20th of April in Molecular Cell, the publication offers insight into RNA-binding proteins which are involved in the regulation of microRNA biogenesis. 

Treiber T., Treiber N., Plessmann U., Harlander S., Daiß J.-L., Eichner N., Lehmann G., Schall K., Urlaub H. & Meister G. (2017) A compendium of RNA-binding proteins that regulate microRNA biogenesis. Molecular Cell, April 20;66(2):270-284.

Direct link to PubMed

"FORUM Science Health" gave all participants and stakeholders from the healthcare sector the opportunity to get up to date on new developments within academic and industry research aswell as innovative medicine. BioSysNet also participated with a network booth. We greatly enjoyed taking part in this exciting event! Read more...

On Tuesday, 20th of June 2017, a group of visitors from the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) met with the Bavarian Research Networks for a scientific exchange. The CAS was especially interested in the structure of research funding in such an exceptional resesarch location as Bavaria and how networking helps the Bavarian scientists. The meeting took place as a point of initiation for future collaborations. It started out with a welcome breakfast, after which Dr. Ulrike Kaltenhauser, the managing director of BioSysNet, introduced the research management. Then, Dr. Saskia Graf from BayFOR gave an overview over German and European funding opportunities. Last but not least, Prof. Eckhard Wolf gave the visitors a tour to his laboratory facilities and provided insight into his work. The successfull event ended over lunch with animated and inspiring conversations.

Like every year, BioSysNet took part at the IKOM Life Science fair at the TUM Campus in Weihenstephan. As in previous years, the research network presented itself to students from different scientific disciplines. This included answering questions, exchanging contacts, lively discussions about research fields and developments as well as recommendations for academic internships and scientific assignments. It was a very informative and memorable day for everyone!

Science communication for research networks 2.0: Social media, YouTube, blogging Twitter & Co. After an overview given by Andrea Geipel from the Munich Center for Technology in Society of the TU Munich, Michael Meyen, the speaker of the research network FORCHANGE, presented the social science FORCHANGE blog on resilience. The main speaker was Lars Fischer, who is well known for his scientific „Fischblog“ initiated in 2007 and has been a Community Manager at the Blogportals SciLogs of Spektrum der Wissenschaft since 2008. He shared with us his everyday work and spoke about theoretical and practical aspects of scientific blogging. During the subsequent panel discussion, new ideas and thoughts were introduced and discussed. 

Every company starts with an idea - but how das an idea turn into a company? At the 32nd meeting of the VBU business network for female managers in Life Sciences, this question was elaborated on the basis of personalized medicine. Presentations from clinical and industrial experts were key to this event titled „Personalized medicine - from the lab to a global player“. Being an experienced manager in Life Sciences, Dr. Ulrike Kaltenhauser, managing director of BioSysNet, also took part. 

The BioSysNet Lunch Seminar "On Technology Innovation" on 24th of January 2017 took place in cooperation with the company siTOOLs as well as Prof. Gunter Meister and Prof. Dr. Peter Dietrich. The seminar's topic was "Focus on Specificity: Genetic Manipulation with RNAi and CRISPR"  - the main goal was to discuss this new technology and its practical implementation, taking into account users, experts and the companies which provide technological solutions. The event was well attended and drew the attention of many scientists. It concluded in a fruitful discussion about practical use and problems for scientific research. BioSysNet was represented through the managing director, Dr. Ulrike Kaltenhauser, as well as the scientific head of the network, Prof. Dr. Horst Domdey. 

On November 29 and 30, 230 experts from all over Europe participated in the 6th Munich Biomarker Conference in Munich. The international conference on personalized medicine was organized by BioM, the network agency of Bavaria’s biotechnology industry. Interdisciplinary exchange and dialogue between researchers, physicians, and industry had been given a particularly high priority. "We want to encourage collaborations, to accelerate the translation of research results into new medicines", explains Horst Domdey, Managing Director of BioM and spokesman of the Bavarian Biotechnology Cluster.

Read more...

The Biomedical Centre of the LMU (Biomedizinische Centrum) has gone online. On their new homepage, you can find information on all research groups and areas which are located within the building. Just follow this link. 

On 9th of November 2016 BioSysNet once again presented itself at the "Careers in Chemie, Pharma, Biotech und Medizin" in Munich. The event was directed towards students and applicants for career opportunities within the areas chemistry, pharma, biotechnology and medicine. In addition to BioSysNet, other companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Covance, jobvector, VBio, BioM were present. 

Read more... 

This year's network meeting of BioSysNet took place in Würzburg. Our thanks go to Dr. Ana Eulalio, Prof. Cynthia Sharma, Prof. Jörg Vogel and their teams for the excellent on-site support. The network meeting not only opened up room for discussion of current research results with colleagues, it was also a great networking event and enabled project leaders to discuss potential new projects and cooperations.

From 15th to 16th of June, BioSysNet was among the exhibitors at the joint booth of Bayern Innovativ at the MedTech Summit 2016 in Nürnberg. At this years summit, a large focus was placed on digitalization in medicine - this perfectly synergizes with BioSysNet's new and upcoming projects. 

At this year's Analytica, which took place from 10th to 13th of May at the Messe Munich, BioSysNet was sharing a booth with co-exhibitor Bio-M. The research network was represented by its main office staff who readily answered questions from the general public as well as from expert audience. More information on the Analytica 2016 can be found here. 

BioSysNet is very proud to have supported the 6th Conference on Systems Biology of Mammalian Cells (SBMC) 2016 as one of the main sponsors. Once again, the event has proven to be a huge success with as many as 270 participants, 140 poster presentations and 40 speakers, who turned the SMBC 2016 into one of the most interesting and interdisciplinary events of systems biology in Germany. 

Prof. Dr. Dr. Fabian Theis of the Mathematics Center of the Technical University of Munich, who is also an associate junior researcher within the BioSysNet network at the Helmholtz Center of Computational Biology, as well as Prof. Dr. Ursula Klingmüller of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) successfully planned and implemented the conference. The BioSysNet research network was also supported on site by our members Dr. Fabiana Perocchi and PD Dr. Olaf Groß. More information can be found here.

The research group of Professor Slany has achieved two new publications, including a research paper as well as a review article: 

Garcia-Cuellar MP, Büttner C, Bartenhagen C, Dugas C, Slany R.K. (2016) Leukemogenic MLL-ENL fusions induce alternative chromatin states to drive a functionally dichotomous group of target genes. CellReports, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2016.03.018

Slany R.K. (2016) The molecular mechanics of mixed lineage leukemia, Oncogene, Review, Feb 29. doi: 10.1038/onc.2016.30

Congratulations on this success!