Founded | 1999 |
---|---|
Headquarters | Dr. Bohr-Gasse 3 1030 Vienna Austria |
Parent | Austrian Academy of Sciences |
Website | www |
The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) is an independent biomedical research organisation founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The institute employs around 250 people from over 40 countries, who perform basic research. IMBA is located at the Vienna BioCenter (VBC) and shares facilities and scientific training programs with the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), the basic research center of Boehringer Ingelheim. [1]
The research at IMBA aims to understand the fundamental molecular biological processes underlying the 3D architecture of genomes, the functions of small RNAs, and the in vitro reconstitution from stem cells of whole organs and embryos. [2]
The institute comprises 14 research groups (as of July 2024): [3]
Associated projects: The Vienna Drosophila RNAi Center (VDRC) is located at IMBA, and is available to researchers worldwide. [8] It collects an RNAi library of over 22,000 Drosophila strains.
2023. First multi-chamber heart organoids [9]
2022. Disentanglement of the roles of condensin and histone deacetylation in chromosome assembly and chromatin compaction [10]
2022. Identification of CLIP cells (human interneuron progenitors) as the origin of Tuberous Sclerosis using patient-derived cerebral organoids [11]
2021. Human blastoids model blastocyst development and implantation [12]
2021. Cardioids reveal self-organizing principles of human cardiogenesis [13]
2020. Identification of a brain-size determinant using cerebral organoids [14]
2020. Discovery on the conformation of sister chromatids in the replicated human genome [15]
2019. Generation of blood vessel organoids from human pluripotent stem cells. [16]
2017. Development of SLAM-Seq for the high-resolution assessment of RNA expression dynamics [17]
2017. Development of a reversible haploid mouse pluripotent stem cell biobank resource for functional genomics. [18]
2013. Generation of cerebral organoids from human pluripotent stem cells to model human brain development [19]
2008. Discovery of an endogenous small interfering RNA pathway in Drosophila. [20]
2005. Discovery of the role of angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in SARS coronavirus–induced lung injury. [21]
The institute was founded in 1999 as a joint initiative of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Boehringer Ingelheim and with contributions from the Austrian Government and the city of Vienna. [22] The construction of the building was initiated in 2003 and completed in 2006. It is linked to the building of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology by a bridge so as to enhance collaborations. Both institutes share a common canteen and their scientific core facilities. In 2002, the geneticist Josef Penninger started as the Scientific Director of the IMBA and recruited Barry Dickson as the first group leader (now at Janelia Research Campus, USA). In 2007 the Vienna Drosophila RNAi Center (VDRC) opened, in collaboration with the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology. In 2018, Josef Penninger was appointed as director of the Life Science Institute of the University of British Columbia [23] and Jürgen Knoblich took the position as interim director of IMBA. In 2020, the institute expanded in an additional building of the Vienna Biocenter (termed VBC6). In 2024, Elly Tanaka took the position as Scientific Director of IMBA.
In order to maintain the highest standard of research, the IMBA has installed a process of review and feedback led by an external Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of internationally recognised scientists. The Board meets yearly and, together with group leaders, discusses the quality, significance, and focus of research conducted. As of December 2022, [24] the IMBA SAB is chaired by Elaine Fuchs (The Rockefeller University) and includes Gregory Hannon (University of Cambridge, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Guido Kroemer (University of Paris Descartes), Maria Leptin (President of the European Research Council ERC and Director of EMBO), Gary Ruvkun (Harvard University), and Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel. [25]
Core scientific facilities within the IMBA provide services to facilitate research making use of stem cells, flies/worms, informatics, optics, molecular biology, comparative medicine, transgenics, protein chemistry, or graphic designs. These core facilities are managed by technical leaders who evaluate and implement a wide range of novel technologies and instrumentations. These professional staff scientists also train users, help with experimental design, and disseminate expert knowledge. The IMBA scientists are not billed for core services, except for certain experiment-related consumables.
Beyond the core scientific facilities of the institute, the IMBA laboratories are also financially supported to use of the core facilities of the Vienna Biocenter.
The IMBA acts as a forum for academic exchange through its participation to a series of weekly internal Vienna Biocenter seminars, and weekly guest lectures (termed "VBC lectures" and "Impromptus") from external, recognised or upcoming scientists.
IMBA and the IMP co-organize the yearly SY-Stem symposium focusing on the next generation of stem cell researchers.
The Vienna Biocenter PhD Programme is an international PhD training program carried out jointly by the four Vienna Biocenter research institutes (IMP, IMBA, GMI and Max Perutz Labs). Acceptance into the program is competitive and based on a formal selection procedure. There are two selections each year, deadlines are usually on April 30 and November 15. Participation in the program is a condition for doing a PhD at the IMBA.
TIMBA has received recognition in the form of 18 ERC grants and through awards to its researchers.
Elly Tanaka, current scientific director, was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2015, [26] of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 2017, the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2021, [27] [28] the National Academy of Sciences in 2023 [29] and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2024. [30] She was awarded the Ernst Schering Prize in 2017, highlighting Tanaka as "the leading expert in the field of regeneration biology". [31] In 2018, she was awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for lifetime achievements. [32] In 2020, she was awarded the FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award. [33]
Jürgen Knoblich, former interim scientific director, has received the Young Investigator Award of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Wittgenstein Award awarded by the Austrian Ministry of Science, [34] the Erwin Schrödinger Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Sir Hans Krebs Medal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS). He is an elected member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, of the Academia Europaea, of the Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), and is on the board of directors of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. In 2015, he was awarded both an Advanced and a Proof-of-concept European Research Council (ERC) grant.
Josef Penninger, former scientific director, has been elected as a full member of The Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). [35] He has been awarded the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine by the Jung-Stiftung for Science and Research, the Descartes Prize for Research by the European Commission and has received the Carus-Medal of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In 2012, Josef Penninger was awarded with the Innovator Award for his project "Novel Approaches to Breast Cancer Prevention and Inhibition of Metastases" through the US Department of Defense. [36] In 2013 Josef Penninger received his second European Research Council’s (ERC) Advanced Investigator Grant for his research in the field of haploid stem cells. [37]
In collaboration with the incorporated society Dialog Gentechnik, in 2006 IMBA opened a hands-on biomolecular laboratory open to the public. [38]
An organoid is a miniaturised and simplified version of an organ produced in vitro in three dimensions that mimics the key functional, structural, and biological complexity of that organ. It is derived from one or a few cells from a tissue, embryonic stem cells, or induced pluripotent stem cells, which can self-organize in three-dimensional culture owing to their self-renewal and differentiation capacities. The technique for growing organoids has rapidly improved since the early 2010s, and The Scientist named it one of the biggest scientific advancements of 2013. Scientists and engineers use organoids to study development and disease in the laboratory, for drug discovery and development in industry, personalized diagnostics and medicine, gene and cell therapies, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.
Matthias Werner Hentze is a German scientist. He is the director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), co-director of the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit between EMBL and Heidelberg University, and Professor of Molecular Medicine at Heidelberg University.
The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) is a biomedical research center, which conducts curiosity-driven basic research in the molecular life sciences.
The Wittgenstein Award is an Austrian science award supporting the notion that "scientists should be guaranteed the greatest possible freedom and flexibility in the performance of their research." The prize money of up to 1.5 million euro make it the most highly endowed science award of Austria, money that is tied to research activities within the five years following the award. The Wittgenstein-Preis is named after the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and is conferred once per year by the Austrian Science Fund on behalf of the Austrian Ministry for Science.
Johannes (Hans) Carolus Clevers is a Dutch molecular geneticist, cell biologist and stem cell researcher. He became the Head of Pharma, Research and Early Development, and a member of the Corporate Executive Committee, of the Swiss healthcare company Roche in 2022. Previously, he headed a research group at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research and at the Princess Máxima Center; he remained as an advisor and guest scientist or visiting researcher to both groups. He is also a Professor in Molecular Genetics at the University of Utrecht.
Thomas Jenuwein is a German scientist working in the fields of epigenetics, chromatin biology, gene regulation and genome function.
Elly Margaret Tanaka is a biochemist and Scientific Director at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) in Vienna, Austria. Tanaka studies the molecular cell biology of limb and spinal cord regeneration as well as the evolution of regeneration.
Melissa Helen Little is an Australian scientist and academic, currently Theme Director of Cell Biology, heading up the Kidney Regeneration laboratory at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. She is also a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, and Program Leader of Stem Cells Australia. In January 2022, she became CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine reNEW, an international stem cell research center based at University of Copenhagen, and a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia, and Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands.
Denise P. Barlow was a British geneticist who worked in the field of epigenomics. Barlow was an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), an honorary professor of genetics at the University of Vienna and recipient of the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1991, she discovered the first mammalian imprinted gene, IGF2R, which codes for the insulin-like growth factor.
Alexander Stark is a biochemist and computational biologist working on the regulation of gene expression in development. He is a senior scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) at the Vienna Biocenter and adjunct professor of the Medical University of Vienna.
Madeline Lancaster is an American developmental biologist studying neurological development and diseases of the brain. Lancaster is a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK.
Jürgen Knoblich is a German molecular biologist. Since 2018, he is the interim Scientific Director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
Daniel Wolfram Gerlich is a German cell biologist. Since 2012 he has been a Senior Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
Julius Brennecke is a German molecular biologist and geneticist. He is a Senior Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology. (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
Matthias Lutolf is a bio-engineer and a professor at EPFL where he leads the Laboratory of Stem Cell Bioengineering. He is specialised in biomaterials, and in combining stem cell biology and engineering to develop improved organoid models. In 2021, he became the scientific director for Roche's Institute for Translation Bioengineering in Basel.
Axel Behrens is a German-British molecular biologist and an expert in cancer stem cell biology. He is the Scientific Director of the Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre in London, a senior group leader at the Institute of Cancer Research and a professor at Imperial College London.
Andrea Pauli is a developmental biologist and biochemist studying how the egg transitions into an embryo, and more specifically the molecular mechanisms underlying vertebrate fertilisations, egg dormancy, and subsequent egg activation. Her lab uses zebrafish as the main model organism. Andrea Pauli is a group leader at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) at the Vienna Biocenter in Austria.
Prisca Liberali is an Italian chemist who is a senior group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. Her research takes a systems biology approach to understand the behaviour of multi-cellular systems. She was awarded the EMBO Gold Medal and EMBO Membership in 2022.
Meritxell Huch is a stem cell biologist and director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. Her research considers tissue regeneration and the development of tissue-specific disease models for human organs. She was awarded a European Research Council Consolidator Grant in 2023.
A myelinoid or myelin organoid is a three dimensional in vitro cultured model derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) that represents various brain regions, the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system in early fetal human development. Myelinoids have the capacity to recapitulate aspects of brain developmental processes, microenvironments, cell to cell interaction, structural organization and cellular composition. The differentiating aspect dictating whether an organoid is deemed a cerebral organoid/brain organoid or myelinoid is the presence of myelination and compact myelin formation that is a defining feature of myelinoids. Due to the complex nature of the human brain, there is a need for model systems which can closely mimic complicated biological processes. Myelinoids provide a unique in vitro model through which myelin pathology, neurodegenerative diseases, developmental processes and therapeutic screening can be accomplished.