Treatment with broad-spectrum antibiotics often leads to side effects, as it affects not only the pathogens but also the “good” bacteria in the gut. A research team from Hannover Medical School (MHH), Saarland University Hospital (UKS), and the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) has now demonstrated that the natural compound argyrin B is highly effective against the pathogen Clostridioides difficile while largely sparing the beneficial gut microbiome. The researchers published their findings in the journal npj Antimicrobials and Resistance.

Through the Helmholtz Global Fellow Program, the Helmholtz Association supports outstanding international researchers whose projects bring fresh scientific momentum to Helmholtz centers. One of these fellows is Dr Jiteshkumar Prakash Deore, who has been conducting research at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) since May 2026. In Dr Kenan Bozhuyuk’s group "Synthetic Biology of Microbial Natural Products", he is working on new synthetic biology platforms for the development of antimicrobial agents.

Why do the gut microbiomes of people from industrialized and non-industrialized regions differ? A study by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the University of Trento (Italy), and the University of Tübingen shows that diet alone does not explain these differences. In artificially assembled gut communities, the team examined numerous dietary components and demonstrated that plant-based dietary fiber shifted the balance in favor of the bacterium Segatella copri, which is particularly common in non-industrialized regions. However, the effect also depended on which other bacteria were present. The results were published in the journal Nature Microbiology.