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In May 2020, the international consortium iCAIR® started a research project aimed at developing therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2. The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), which joined forces with the consortium's core team last year, is also closely involved in this project. The HZI researchers under the leadership of Prof. Ulrich Kalinke have expanded the iCAIR® outstanding talent pool: they boast a successful track record in antiviral drug research, in particular against human pathogenic RNA viruses, and have compound libraries as well as test models and primary virus isolates. In addition, a team from Fraunhofer ITMP led by Prof. Carsten Claussen and Dr. Ole Pless is on board as a temporary project partner. The iCAIR® research team already can report promising results, which were presented by iCAIR® coordinator Prof. Armin Braun and others at Fraunhofer ITEM's virtual workshop "Models of Lung Disease" in January.

Every year, about 10 million people become infected with tuberculosis and 1.4 million die from it. This makes tuberculosis not only one of the most widespread infectious diseases, but also the deadliest. Similar to malaria or HIV, the prevalence of tuberculosis is strongly dependent on social factors; it is considered a classic disease of the poor. In addition to a lack of medical care, other problems hinder the containment of tuberculosis, such as antibiotic resistance and undesirable drug-drug interactions.

The bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa is among the most common causes of pneumonia and poses a major challenge to hospitals worldwide. The treatment of infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa is usually challenging because the bacterium forms so-called biofilms, which protect it from drugs. Dr Martin Empting and his team, in collaboration with several groups at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), have now developed an innovative method to disrupt the formation of these biofilms and thus facilitate the treatment of infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The researchers have published their findings in the journal Advanced Science.

Therapeutically modified white blood cells hold great potential in the treatment of multiple myeloma, a malignant cancer of the bone marrow. However, they can lead to serious resistance in treated patients. In close cooperation, medical doctors and scientists from the University Hospital and the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research in Würzburg have now investigated the causes of this previously unexplained phenomenon. In the process, they uncovered a crucial resistance mechanism. The results were just published in the journal Nature Medicine.

An international research team of the Technische Universität Braunschweig and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), led by the Department of Biotechnology of the TU Braunschweig, has reported on the development of special antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in the journal Nature Communications. These antibodies prevent the viruses from entering host cells and were isolated from an antibody gene library that had already been produced from immune cells of healthy donors before the pandemic. The study shows how, in the future, active substances to previously unknown, emerging viruses can be produced very quickly without patient material.

The CoVerage tool analyses the lineage dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 strains, i.e. determines how successfully which virus strain spreads. The web resource uses input from the Gisaid genome database. Gisaid is an international initiative that aims to make research data rapidly available to the public. Scientists from all over the world contribute genome sequences of viruses such as H1N1, influenza or SARS-CoV-2 to the database, thus providing a broad overview of mutations and their genetic differences. However, to predict the spread potential of these mutations, a simple count of incidences is not sufficient.