Species protection

The international BioRescue consortium in Berlin has announced that for the first time a rhino has successfully become pregnant following embryo transfer. This paves the way for using of the same method of reproductive medicine to save the northern white rhino from extinction.

To save the northern white rhinoceros from extinction, the BioRescue team is racing to create lab-grown egg and sperm cells of the critically endangered subspecies. The team has now reported a milestone in “Science Advances”: they have generated primordial germ cells from stem cells – a world’s first.

Malaysia’s last male Sumatran rhino, Kertam, died in 2019. Now, a team from the Max Delbrück Center has successfully grown stem cells and mini-brains from his skin cells. As they report in "iScience", their goal is to create sperm cells that may help to save the endangered species from extinction.

To prevent the extinction of the northern white rhino, the international consortium BioRescue is attempting to create artificial egg cells from stem cells. A team led by MDC’s Sebastian Diecke and Micha Drukker of Leiden University has now revealed in "Scientific Reports" that they are one step closer to achieving this goal.

Research and conservation are not exempt from the negative effects of the pandemic. The BioRescue research project, a program aiming at saving the northern white rhino from extinction, exemplifies the challenges research and conservation face in an international consortium during these times.

How to save a functionally extinct species, animal testing in neurobiology, and innovative new cancer therapies – these are just some of the topics covered in the lectures series “New Avenues in Biomedicine.” The series, which includes contributions from three MDC researchers, offers the general public a lens into what’s happening in the world of science.

Today the research project BioRescue for the rescue of the Northern White Rhino, which is threatened with extinction, is officially launched. State-of-the-art reproduction and stem cell technology shall ensure the survival of this key species. The international scientific consortium, led by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and with the significant participation of the MDC, is receiving around 4 million Euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the BMBF's biodiversity conservation research initiative.

With its large-scale research project BioRescue, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding research into the artificial reproduction of the functionally extinct northern white rhino. MDC researchers are among the project partners working together to create new animals from skin cells.

Northern White Rhinos (NWR) are functionally extinct, as only two females are left on this planet. An international team has now successfully completed three milestones that could bring the species back to life. Their research has been published in Nature Communications.

To save the northern white rhino from extinction an international research team around Thomas Hildebrandt and Sebastian Diecke has chosen an unusual approach. They want to facilitate an in vitro fertilisation by transforming the animals’ skin cells into egg cells.