The Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLS) is an international and interdisciplinary institute at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Leibniz University Hannover (LUH). CELLS took up its activities in 2007 as a working group on medical law and bioethics and was later, on 10 September 2008, founded as an autonomous research initiative. CELLS became a Leibniz Research Initiative and was subsequently incorporated as an independent permanent institute within the faculty. The institute has grown consistently and is currently at the forefront of research into the ethical, legal and social implications of the life sciences.