The University of Bonn is acknowledging the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11 by reaffirming its aim of promoting gender equality in academia. Women are still significantly underrepresented in many research fields at university level, and the trend is more marked the higher up the career ladder one goes. The University has launched numerous initiatives and programs to tackle the problem.

A groundbreaking approach that targets the degradation of membrane proteins in cancer cells has received funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder program. The goal: To target previously "undruggable" cancer-related proteins by selectively degrading them and potentially offering a new way to overcome resistance to current cancer therapies. 

The Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bonn is continuously expanding its international relations and intensifying existing collaborations. Since last summer, it has also been engaged in increasing exchange with Tongji University School of Medicine (TUSM). Following visits by both sides, the Bonn faculty welcomed a delegation led by Prof. Jialin C. Zheng, Dean of TUSM, to Venusberg on January 30, 2026.

Second and third place in the BioRiver Boost! 2025 start-up competition went to the two start-up teams OncoDegrade and ColdEx from the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn (UKB). First place went to the company JWP GmbH from Jülich. A total of eight finalists pitched their projects to a jury of experts at the award ceremony in Cologne in December. The competition is organized by BioRiver e.V. and annually honors innovative start-up projects in the biotechnology and life sciences industry.

The Medical Faculty looks back on a successful and eventful 2025!

The human brain must be able to link memory content to the circumstances in which it occurs. Researchers in Bonn have now discovered how the human brain uses two different groups of neurons to store content and context separately. These nerve cell groups work together in a coordinated manner to form memories, rather than mixing signals in the activity of individual cells. The study results have now been published in the renowned journal Nature.

Two projects by researchers from the University of Bonn and University Hospital Bonn (UKB) have each been awarded up to €1 million in funding from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space’s “GO-Bio initial” program. The funds will be used to translate research findings from the life sciences into marketable products and services, e.g. through securing patent protection and spinning off start-ups.

MOG Antibody-associated Disease (MOGAD) is a rare autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. The blood of patients contains antibodies against myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG), a protein in the myelin layer that surrounds the neurons in the brain. It is believed that these antibodies contribute to the destruction of this protective layer in the brain. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the Universities of Basel and Bonn, in collaboration with Yale School of Medicine and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), have now deciphered the construction plan of the anti-MOG antibodies. The researchers see their findings on the misdirected immune response, which have now been published in the journal Neurology® Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation, as the basis for developing specific MOGAD therapies.