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At the end of December 2019, the first cases of pneumonia caused by a novel coronavirus were reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan. Since then, infections with the pathogen appeared on several continents. Strict measures to control the epidemic have been put in place to stop its further spread. The SORMAS (Surveillance, Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System) app developed at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig is now contributing to this effort. The scientists expanded the mobile information system for disease monitoring to include a module for combating the coronavirus epidemic. The new coronavirus module is available in Nigeria and Ghana, where SORMAS is already in use. It can be implemented in any other country that wants to use SORMAS in the future.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria are one of the greatest threats to global health. In order to alleviate this problem, researchers explore new applications for already existing antibiotics in addition to the search for new active substances. Until now, the antibiotic mupirocin could only be applied locally to treat skin infections. Encapsulating the drug into nanoparticles would enable to broaden its range of applications. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, together with colleagues at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, have shown that nanotechnology enables a systemic application of mupirocin. The study was published in the Journal of Controlled Release.

The bacterium Staphylococcus aureus can be part of the normal bacterial population inhabiting our body, but can also cause serious infections. This bacterium has often developed resistance to standard antibiotics or even multi-resistance to several antibiotics such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Particularly in hospitals, MRSA is often the cause of severe and difficult-to-treat infections. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new drugs that can effectively treat MRSA infections. In order to shorten the lengthy and expensive development process, scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have used an innovative approach to antibiotic development. The researchers used chemical synthesis to significantly improve the antimicrobial properties of an approved cancer medicament that also has a moderate killing activity on MRSA. The resulting molecule, named PK150, is highly effective against MRSA infections without the development of resistance. The results are published in the journal Nature Chemistry.

In the genetic blueprint for proteins, the information for each amino acid is encoded by codons. A codon consists of three consecutive building blocks of messenger RNA (mRNA), a base triplet that encodes exactly one amino acid. During protein synthesis, adaptor molecules - called tRNAs - specifically base-pair with the codon and bring the correct amino acid into the catalytic center of the ribosome, where it is attached to the growing peptide chain. Although this process has been thought to be highly accurate, on specific mRNAs ribosomes can be programmed to move by one base and thus change the meaning of all following codons. This phenomenon is called programmed ribosomal frameshifting (PRF) and is used in all domains of life, especially by pathogens such as viruses. As all downstream codons are affected, PRF can strongly alter the structure and function of the resulting protein. Junior Professor Neva Caliskan from the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg, a joint institution of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig and the Julius Maximilian University Würzburg, collaborated with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (MPI-BPC) to develop a model to calculate the frameshift efficiency from the free energy of base pairing. Using this approach, the researchers can now predict sites in the genome where PRF is likely to occur, giving rise to altered proteomes. The study was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

Electron microscopy (EM) is not some monotonous assembly-line job, because each assignment poses new challenges. A diverse range of things is magnified and examined, such as immune cells, algae or phages – the work is always different and always interesting. However, biological EM is only practiced by four specialists in Germany. One of these highly qualified experts is Manfred Rohde at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI).

New medicines for treating tuberculosis, malaria and other infectious diseases are still urgently needed, particularly in developing countries. The spread of antibiotic-resistant germs also results in a critical shortage of effective medications for treating and containing infectious diseases. Although this is a global problem, developing and emerging countries are particularly affected. In order to counteract this trend, researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and its Saarbrücken-based branch, the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), are now collaborating with Evotec, a leading drug discovery and development company, in a targeted search for new, effective drugs for treating tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding this collaboration over three years with 2.3 million euros.