Maike Sander is the Scientific Director and Chair of the Board of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin. Appointed in 2022, she is the first woman to head one of the Helmholtz Health Centers within the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California in San Diego (UC San Diego), USA, and a professor at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin in Berlin. Before moving to Berlin, she served as Director of the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center at UC San Diego from 2012 to 2022, where she was also a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

Following the completion of her medical degree at the University of Heidelberg Medical School in Germany, she conducted research at the University of California, San Francisco. She then served as a faculty member at Hamburg Medical School in Germany and the University of California, Irvine. She joined UC San Diego in 2008. From 2019 to 2022, she has been an Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH). 

She is a German physician-scientist, internationally renowned for her expertise in the fields of diabetes and stem cell research. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that control the formation and function of the different cell types in the pancreas, in particular the insulin-producing beta cells, which are affected in diabetes. Her research is multidisciplinary and combines genetic human pluripotent stem cells based and mouse models with advanced sequencing and bioinformatic approaches to identify strategies for regenerating and replacing pancreatic beta cells. The aim is to develop novel therapeutic approaches for diabetes.

Her research is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Sander is an elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society of Clinical Investigation. In addition, she is a member of two NIH consortia: The Human Islet Research Network and the NIH Impact of Genomic Variation on Function Consortium, which seeks to define basic mechanisms of gene regulation. She is a recipient of the Grodsky Award of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the 2022 Albert Renold Prize of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award.

In her words: “As Scientific Director, my goal will be to further strengthen the MDC’s role as a leading biomedical research center and to deepen partnerships with other institutions in Berlin and beyond, so that our discoveries can be rapidly turned into medical innovations.” She also emphasizes that “medical innovation needs strong basic science, clinical science and industry partners – components that are all part of the vibrant Berlin biomedical ecosystem, The Berlin region is developing into a flourishing biotech pharma hub and I see the MDC as a principal driver of innovation in this landscape.” 

Keywords: biomedical research, diabetes, stem cells, pancreatic beta cells. Curiosity, discovery.

Berlin – December 6th, 2023

How did you decide to become a scientist?
At eighteen, I didn’t have a mapped-out plan that I would be what I am today; it was more of a step-by-step journey. In high school, I already liked the sciences more than the humanities. So, I followed that curiosity, and I went to medical school because I was unsure if I wanted to purely pursue science or if also wanted to have the rewarding experience of treating patients. In medical school, I realized that I liked being in the lab and figuring things out. I think what I enjoyed most about the pursuit of science was that it’s so self-determined. No one tells you what to do each day. And I think I wasn’t fully aware of what really motivates me when I was going through it. I took each step one at a time, figuring out what would I like next. So, I didn’t have a detailed plan. I think I always knew that I had to make sure that I played my cards right and that I had to take care of myself, yet I allowed myself the flexibility to figure out where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. This led me to move a lot and live in different countries, always open to do next what seemed most exciting.

What is your drive and excitement in science and in doing what you do now?
I think it was always that sense of self-determination that is very important to me, that I enjoyed, and I believe it’s something unique that no other profession would offer in the same way. That’s how I felt about it. And then the fact that no matter how small an observation you make this week or this month or whatever new data you produce, you somehow know that no one has ever observed it before. And it may not instantly cure humanity, but that moment of realizing, “Wow, what does that mean? Nobody has observed that before, and now it’s up to me and my team to look at it and try to make sense of it.” That is a huge driver.

Would you have one word to give as a gift to other women and, more generally, to young aspiring scientists, women or men? My first piece of advice is “Follow your passion and your instinct for what you love”. The second one is “Don’t look so much at the outside world, let yourself drive yourself.”