In an official ceremony, the University of Basel celebrated its 562nd Dies Academicus and awarded honorary doctorates to eight individuals from academia and society.
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has awarded seven Starting Grants to University of Basel researchers. The projects come from the fields of philosophy, ancient civilizations, chemistry, biomedicine, pharmaceutical science and public health.
Physicists at the University of Basel have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that there is a negative correlation between the two spins of an entangled pair of electrons from a superconductor. For their study, the researchers used spin filters made of nanomagnets and quantum dots, as they report in the scientific journal Nature.
Liver cancer is one of the most deadly types of cancer. A team of University of Basel researchers has now uncovered how a healthy liver cell turns into a tumor cell. Comprehensive metabolic changes convert mature liver cells into immature progenitor cells. These cells proliferate rapidly and tumors develop.
The University of Basel is expanding its Schällemätteli campus with a new research building for its Department of Biomedicine. A sole contractor has been selected, bringing the project one step closer to the start of construction. To finance the new building, the governments of the two Basel cantons have asked their parliaments to increase the credit guarantee.
Although the complement system forms part of the innate immune system, it can cause damage to the body in some cases. This is because unwanted complement activation contributes to many autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases. Now, researchers have described molecular details of a recently approved class of drugs that can inhibit the complement system. These findings pave the way for further optimization of such inhibitors.
Although the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 does not infect nerve cells, it can cause damage to the nervous system. Researchers from the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel have studied the mechanisms responsible for this effect, known as “neuro-Covid”, and identified starting points for its prevention.
An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel has studied the effects of the Covid-19 booster vaccination on the heart muscle. According to their findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, mild damage is more common than previously thought. Cardiologist Professor Christian Müller talks about the results in an interview.
Researchers at the University of Basel have uncovered a cell-intrinsic mechanism that controls the appropriate number of T cells in the organism and thus ensures that the immune system functions properly. This mechanism has also been found in slime molds, suggesting that this regulation of cell density is evolutionarily conserved.
