Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research
The scientists of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research study the mechanisms involved in infectious diseases and defenses against them: What makes bacteria or viruses turn into disease-causing pathogens? How can we intervene in the infection process?
Latest News
15.05.12
HZI awards young infection researchers
The Jürgen Wehland Prize – endowed with 5000 Euros – is announced / application deadline 1 July
For the second time, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and the Friends of the HZI support young scientists with an award in memory of the former Scientific Director of the HZI, Professor Jürgen Wehland.
02.05.12
HZI opens study centre in Hannover
Long term medical studies of chronic diseases planned
The new premises of the HZI study center in Hannover have been opened with an official ceremony today. In the future, long-term population studies with voluntary probands will be conducted in the new centre. The results are supposed to shed new light on chronic diseases such as cancer or dementia. “We want to study how currently neglected factors, among them infections, influence the risk to...
29.04.12
Direct access to desired genes
Study of natural compounds made simpler: Bacterial researchers develop improved DNA technique
Targeted exchange of DNA segments instead of tedious search: German and Chinese scientists have developed a technique for the direct isolation of genetic information from complex mixtures of different bacteria. Compounds produced by bacteria can often be used as pharmaceutics, for instance as antibiotics or chemotherapeutics. With the new method, they can be produced in the...
29.03.12
The Achilles' heel of cancer cells
University and HZI researchers discover many tumor cells cannot survive without the presence of an enzyme known as 'Ark5'
Scientists at Germany's University of Würzburg along with their Braunschweig colleagues at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) recently discovered the existence of a weak link in certain types of cancer cells that may prove a promising target for novel kinds of drug treatments in cancer therapy. The pharmaceutical industry has already expressed an interest in the discovery. The...
02.03.12
Why Immune Stem Cells Disappear As We Age
German scientists illuminate underlying mechanism
With advancing age, a person's immune system often grows weaker. One reason behind this is the gradual decline of the stem cell population that the body draws on in its ongoing effort to replace old worn-out or damaged immune cells. Now, scientists at the University of Ulm, Germany, in collaboration with the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany, have at last...
