Mission: Impossible (or is it?)

One picture – in 1984 – completely changed the world of crystals, introducing a new classof materials: quasicrystals. Once believed to be mathematically, physically, and chemically impossible, the first picture proving their existence puzzled scientists to a point that a Nobel laureate and many others, did not believe in their existence. After thirty years, a mysterious mineral labelled “khatyrkite” in an archive in Florence, is proven to be a quasicrystal, and a group of scientists is sent on an incredible voyage to the remote Russian tundra to search for the first natural quasicrystal.

Imagine if you could treat every patient in need of a bone marrow transplantation, without depending on constraining donor availability. That’s the starting point of the idea to generate hematopoietic stem cells, the key element for transplantation, from stem cells created in laboratories (iPSC). Through multiple graft assay, we successfully managed to recapitulate the hematopoiesis in mice and are now looking toward engraftment in a new animal model, the minipig Aachen.