CeMM

20/04/2026

🧬 𝗔 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝘂𝗸𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗮: 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗱, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗶𝗻

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is one of the most aggressive childhood blood cancers. While survival rates have improved, relapse remains a major challenge. Promising new approaches target leukemia cells’ molecular vulnerabilities, including therapies that disrupt genetic regulation. However, cancer cells often have redundant backup mechanisms. If one component fails, another steps in to ensure survival.

Instead of directly targeting a cancer-driving protein, researchers from St. Anna Kinderkrebsforschung (CCRI) and CeMM, in the group of CeMM Adjunct PI Davide Seruggia, took a different approach by removing the structural framework that keeps it stable. Published in 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴, the study shows that disrupting the SAGA complex, a protein scaffold essential for the stability of the enzyme KAT2A (which is involved in gene activation and has long been considered a vulnerability of AML cells), triggers a domino effect. Without this support, KAT2A loses its function and is rapidly degraded by the cell’s quality-control system, thereby halting leukemia cell growth.

This strategy overcomes a key challenge in AML. When KAT2A is directly inhibited, a related protein can compensate. By targeting the scaffold instead, this workaround is bypassed, revealing a previously hidden vulnerability.

The findings highlight a promising new concept in cancer therapy: targeting protein stability and structure rather than the protein itself.

🔗 Read more: https://bit.ly/484XvFv

📄 Publication: https://bit.ly/4cPghT5

📷 From L to R: Senior author Davide Seruggia and first author Paul Batty (© St Anna CCRI).

📷 Fluorescence microscopy image of human HAP1 cells. DNA is shown in magenta, while cells expressing a green fluorescent marker indicate successful delivery of CRISPR guide RNAs for gene editing (© Seruggia Group, St Anna CCRI).

19/04/2026

Congratulations to our CeMM colleagues who successfully completed the 43rd Vienna City Marathon today! 🏃‍♀️🏃

The Vienna City Marathon is one of the world’s most renowned running events, bringing together thousands of runners every year. The course winds through the beautiful streets of Vienna, passing some of the city’s most iconic landmarks.

Once again this year, we teamed up with our partners from St. Anna Kinderkrebsforschung (CCRI). In total, 64 colleagues, organized into 16 running teams, collectively covered the full 42 km marathon distance around Vienna’s city center.

We are incredibly proud of everyone who took part. It was inspiring to see our colleagues supporting one another, cheering each other on, and pushing themselves to achieve their personal bests.

Well done to all our runners who represented CeMM’s values today: hard work, dedication, and perseverance! 👏

📷 Franzi Kreis / CeMM

17/04/2026

⏳ 𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝟮 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗠𝗠!

Don’t miss this opportunity to join a new research program on pain and aging / healthy lifespan expansion and establish your independent research group within a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.

📅 Deadline: 24 April 2026
🔎 More information: https://bit.ly/4rCM7aT
📩 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗼𝘄: 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻@𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗺.𝗮𝘁 (reference code: "CeMM PI Pain&Aging")

👉 Apply now and help shape the future of biomedical research!

📢 𝗖𝗲𝗠𝗠 𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝟮 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 (𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀)

We are recruiting two exceptionally innovative, creative, and ambitious early-career scientists to join CeMM as Starting P*s within a new research program on 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 / 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻.

⌛ In modern society, increased lifespan is not always matched by prolonged health and well-being. Our new interdisciplinary research area, 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗡-𝗔𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗚, aims to understand the biological mechanisms underlying healthy aging and chronic pain, with the goal of preventing and targeting non-communicable diseases associated with unhealthy aging, such as neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and cardiometabolic disorders.

The PAIN-AGING program explores how factors such as biologic aging, metaflammation, viral infection, microbiota composition, and pain signaling pathways interact to drive unhealthy aging and reveal new targets for intervention.

👉 We are looking for MD and/or PhD scientists with an exceptional track record in pain research, neurosciences, immunology, or related fields, ready to establish their first independent research group and pursue innovative research closely connected to clinical questions.

Join a highly collaborative CeMM Faculty of 20 research group leaders, working across key areas such as epigenetic regulation, microbiota biology, metabolism, genomic integrity, inflammation, innovative pharmacology, patient-derived organoids, and more.

📅 𝘒𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴:
• Application deadline: 24 April 2026
• PI hearings: 2–3 June 2026

🔎 More information: https://bit.ly/4rCM7aT

📩 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗼𝘄: 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻@𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗺.𝗮𝘁, reference code "CeMM PI Pain&Aging"

Join us in shaping the future of biomedical research and medicine!

15/04/2026

🧠 A great Impromptu Seminar on plasticity in brain–body control of metabolism, held by Henning Fenselau from the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research and hosted by our Scientific Director Maria Rescigno.

In his talk, Fenselau presented his group’s work aimed at deciphering the neural principles governing systemic metabolism regulation. Internal state signals and environmental cues actively reshape the neural circuits that control the body’s metabolism, enabling the brain to dynamically adjust energy balance.

Henning Fenselau has been a Research Group Leader within the Max Planck Society since 2018. His group seeks to identify and functionally characterize the brain circuits that integrate body signals with environmental cues to regulate systemic metabolism. Their main focus is to unravel the mechanisms of synaptic and circuit plasticity that permit flexible adaptations in food intake and metabolic parameters. They also examine how perturbations of these processes contribute to prevalent diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Thank you, Henning, for an insightful seminar on the neural control of metabolism!

📷 Wolfgang Däuble / CeMM

14/04/2026

🚀 #𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗥𝗼𝘄𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗼𝘂𝗿 #𝗖𝗲𝗠𝗠𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱!

Today, we feature CeMM research groups advancing genomic medicine:

🧬 CAR T cell therapy enables a patient’s immune cells to recognize and kill cancer cells and is already approved for treating certain blood cancers. However, these engineered cells often fail in many patients. "Our hypothesis was that some of the diverse biological functions that CAR T cells inherit from normal T cells are detrimental to their therapeutic efficacy," said CeMM PI Christoph Bock during the group’s discussion at the 𝘙𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 (Musicalvienna (VBW)).

Last year, the Bock group introduced CELLFIE, a CRISPR-based platform to optimize cancer immunotherapy by systematically identifying gene knockouts that strengthen CAR T cells and improve their ability to eliminate cancer cells.

👉 https://bit.ly/4mgwd4K

🖥️ The group of CeMM Adjunct PI Jörg Menche (Max Perutz Labs / Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine) applies network theory to understand how molecular networks are organized and disrupted in disease. A recent project mapped large-scale interactions between nearly 1,000 chemical exposures and over 25,000 human genes from the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database. Their approach provides a blueprint to systematically investigate the impact of chemical exposures from the molecular to the population level.

The study illustrates how the Menche group uses interdisciplinary network science to make sense of complex datasets: “I am convinced that our unique blend of backgrounds leads us to conclusions that are frankly out of reach for anyone else,” said Menche during their discussion at the Schauspielhaus Wien.

👉 https://bit.ly/3PU8P17

📸 Klaus Pichler / CeMM

09/04/2026

What a great with Ivaylo Ivanov from Columbia University today at CeMM, hosted by our Scientific Director Maria Rescigno and PI Clarissa Campbell.

Ivanov’s lab studies how immune responses to commensal bacteria influence host physiology. In his talk, “Adaptive Immunity at the Host–Microbiota Interface,” he described their work on commensal-specific Th17 cells in regulating mucosal homeostasis and systemic metabolic disease. He highlighted the coordinated roles of intestinal epithelial cells, dendritic cells, and macrophages, revealing a division of labor between dendritic cells and macrophages in shaping commensal-specific immunity and protective mucosal T cell responses.

Ivaylo Ivanov is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where he heads the Laboratory for Mucosal Immunology. His research has been instrumental in defining how the microbiota interact with intestinal epithelial cells and regulate mucosal T cell differentiation and function. More recently, his group has also uncovered how interactions between diet, microbiota, and mucosal immunity can influence systemic diseases such as obesity.

Thank you, Ivaylo, for an insightful seminar on the complex dialogue between microbes and the immune system!

📸 Barbara Bachmann / CeMM

08/04/2026

Congratulations to Lukas Englmaier, from the group of CeMM Adjunct PI Andreas Villunger (MedUni Innsbruck), who successfully defended today his PhD thesis entitled "tRNA thiolation defects disrupt cellular proteostasis and tissue homeostasis in mammals".

During his PhD studies, Lukas investigated how the loss of a single sulfur atom on tRNA molecules (the cell's molecular messengers) can disrupt protein synthesis and cause DREAM-PL syndrome, a severe congenital disorder. Using both patient cells and a newly developed mouse model, his research revealed that this tRNA modification is required for the proper formation of primary cilia, providing a molecular explanation for the disease observed in patients.

Your colleagues and friends at CeMM are proud of you, Lukas. Well done! 🎉👏

📸 Wolfgang Däuble / CeMM

07/04/2026

🚀 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 #𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗥𝗼𝘄𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻, 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 #𝗖𝗲𝗠𝗠𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱!

We kick off by featuring CeMM research groups working on drug discovery:

🧬 Purines are important building blocks of DNA and RNA. In collaboration with the University of Oxford, CeMM PI Stefan Kubicek's group uncovered an unexpected regulatory role for the protein NUDT5 beyond its enzymatic activity.

"Our work reveals a completely different role—it acts as a structural regulator that determines whether the cell keeps producing purines or not," Kubicek reflected during their discussion at Vienna's English Theatre. Their results are relevant to cancer therapy and genetic disorders.

👉 https://bit.ly/3QbMITK

🔬 Solute carriers (SLCs) are the largest family of membrane transporters and control how cells exchange nutrients and metabolites. In 2025, CeMM Founding Director Giulio Superti-Furga's group and collaborators provided the first comprehensive functional landscape of SLCs and one of the largest systematic annotations of gene function ever undertaken.

At the 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘯𝘣𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘯, Superti-Furga discussed their therapeutic potential, given that half of all SLCs are linked to human disease, including neurological diseases, diabetes, and cancer: “If we can understand the regulation of access to nutrients, building blocks, vitamins, and ions, then we can modulate disease, because if metabolism can be modulated, then there is no disease that cannot be modulated.”

👉 https://bit.ly/3O9lwVb

💊 Many disease-causing proteins remain difficult to target with conventional drugs. CeMM Adjunct PI Georg Winter (AITHYRA) studies new strategies to eliminate such proteins through targeted protein degradation. Recently, his group discovered that certain inhibitors can unexpectedly trigger the natural destruction of their targets inside the cell.

"Instead of finding artificial routes to trash unwanted proteins, we can ask what the cell already sees as trash, then identify drugs that make the protein resemble that," Winter explained during their discussion at the 𝘙𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 (Musicalvienna (VBW)). These findings open new possibilities for drug design by harnessing the cell’s own degradation machinery.

👉 https://bit.ly/3O9lwo9

📸 Klaus Pichler / CeMM

02/04/2026

Spring is starting to bloom and the Easter holidays bring us an opportunity to pause, reflect, and recharge. This season symbolizes renewal and fresh perspectives, perfect for sparking creativity, new ideas, and inspiration for our research projects.

As part of a long-established tradition at CeMM, our community enjoyed the traditional “Pinze” today, a sweet specialty that Austrians cherish during this time of the year.

Wishing everyone a joyful and restful Easter break! 🐰💐

02/04/2026

🦠 Recent research shows that tumors across different organs harbor microbial communities that can influence cancer biology, immune responses, and therapeutic efficacy, highlighting the need to standardize methods for studying intratumoral microbes.

An international consensus article in 𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳 𝘊𝘦𝘭𝘭, co-led by CeMM Scientific Director Maria Rescigno, synthesizes the available evidence, addresses key methodological challenges, and outlines shared standards for more reliable and reproducible detection of tumor-associated microbes. A step toward translating microbiota insights into practical strategies for better cancer care.

➡️ Read more: https://bit.ly/3NQ2Jy7
📄 Article: https://bit.ly/4sV0F79

01/04/2026

This week, and welcomed 30 PhD candidates to our institutes. Being among the top candidates, out of a pool of more than 1200 applicants, is already a big success, and we highly appreciate the level of qualifications and excellence among the students. The program brought together candidate presentations, in-depth scientific discussions, one-on-one interviews with faculty, and interactions with group members and PhD representatives.

It is great to see such a high level of engagement and interest in Molecular Medicine and and Artificial Intelligence. It was a pleasure to connect with a diverse and talented cohort of early-career scientists.

Many thanks to the candidates, and to everyone who contributed to organizing and supporting the recruitment days.

01/04/2026

🎉𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗲𝗠𝗠 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗵 𝗕𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗲 (𝗘𝗣 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗠𝗲𝗱) 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹!

His three-year project, PharmocogenOmics for minimized Risk and better Efficacy in Children on high-dose Steroid Treatment (PhORECaST), aims to improve the use of high-dose glucocorticoids. While this therapy is widely used for acute immune-mediated diseases in children, treatment responses vary greatly, and clinicians currently lack reliable tools to predict which patients will benefit or experience adverse effects.

By integrating clinical data with multi-omics approaches, the consortium seeks to identify molecular signatures that predict therapeutic response and toxicity, enabling more precise and evidence-based therapies.

At CeMM, Christoph Bock and his team will lead the epigenomic analysis of patient samples to investigate how glucocorticoid treatment affects gene regulation in immune cells.

🔗 Read more: https://bit.ly/3NPGAzV

📸 Klaus Pichler / CeMM