On 11 September 2025, the Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH) in Greifswald laid the foundation stone for its new research building. The festive ceremony brought together numerous guests from science, politics and partner institutions. The new facility will, for the first time, unite all employees under one roof. Founded in 2021 as a new location of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, the HIOH works in close cooperation with the University of Greifswald, the University Medicine Greifswald and the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI) Greifswald-Riems. The construction is jointly financed by the federal government and predominantly by the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are viruses that infect bacteria. Using phages therapeutically could be very useful in fighting antibiotic-resistant pathogens, but the molecular interactions between phages and host bacteria are not yet sufficiently understood. Jörg Vogel's research group at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) and the Institute of Molecular Infection Biology (IMIB) in Würzburg has now succeeded in specifically interfering with phage reproduction using a molecular tool called antisense oligomers (ASOs). According to the researchers, this innovative RNA technology offers new insights into the molecular world of phages and is expected to advance the development of future therapeutic applications. The study has been published in the journal Nature.

Mpox continues to pose a growing health threat in various African countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where frequent zoonotic spillovers occur across the country and occasionally lead to major outbreaks associated with the emergence of viral lineages whose spread is supported by human-to-human transmission. From August 2024 to September 2025, the World Health Organization had declared mpox a public health emergency, highlighting the urgent need to understand its spread across the region. The drivers behind recent mpox outbreaks in the Central African Republic, where the disease is endemic, had previously been unclear—until now.