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The Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM) is continuing to gain structure and establishment is progressing rapidly. Since summer 2019, this has been accompanied by the new dual leadership of CiiM directors Yang Li and Markus Cornberg.

For a long time, itaconic acid was only known as a metabolic product of fungi. Its function was unknown, but for decades it has been used industrially for polymer production. In 2013, it was surprisingly discovered as an important metabolic product in the immune system. This newly described role has sparked a search for potential clinical applications. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and TWINCORE-Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, jointly founded by the HZI and the Hanover Medical School, have now solved the crystal structure of the itaconic acid-synthesizing enzyme cis-aconitate decarboxylase (CAD). Their findings provide the basis for an improved understanding of itaconic acid synthesis, the evolutionary origin of this important metabolic step, and the role of itaconic acid in the immune system. In particular, the researchers identified naturally occurring and possibly clinically important variations in the human CAD enzyme.

Ascenion GmbH, technology transfer partner of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), announces the take-over of its portfolio company WBC Drug Delivery Technologies (WBC) by Klaria Pharma Holding AB in an all-stock deal. WBC was founded earlier this year to further advance a new drug delivery technology that was co-developed by scientists at the HZI and the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), a HZI branch. The researchers coated liposomes with invasins, proteins that enable bacteria to penetrate eukaryotic cell membranes. The resulting carrier system combines the safety and versatility of liposomes with the unique capacity of bacteria to invade human cells. It holds strong potential to improve the treatment of many diseases, also intracellular infections caused by pathogens "hiding" in membrane-bound vacuoles.

If you want to protect yourself from the flu, you have to be vaccinated anew every year because the viruses are constantly changing the components to which our immune system responds. Our immune system primarily reacts to the two viral proteins haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), although it has been shown that today’s vaccines only trigger a weak immune response against neuraminidase in the vaccinated individuals. This is unfortunate, as evidence suggests that sufficient antibodies against NA can be at least as effective against influenza infections as those against haemagglutinin. The researchers now want to make better use of this effect.

With their project Vaccine for Prevention and Treatment of Trypanosoma cruzi Infection (CRUZIVAX), a consortium of eleven partners coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research has been awarded funding through the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 work programme. The aim of this project is to develop a highly effective, low-cost and easy to administer prophylactic vaccine candidate for Chagas disease, which is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). The vaccine is to be applied as a nasal spray. The project is coordinated by the Vaccinology department of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig under the direction of Prof Carlos A. Guzmán. The total funding amounts to more than eight million euros over a period of five years, about two million euros being provided to the HZI.

In the 1950s, researchers discovered bottromycins – natural substances produced by bacteria with antibiotic activity. Since these substances even kill human pathogens such as the hospital germ MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus areus), they are of interest for drug development. After the discovery of bottromycins, it took until 2012 before researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and its Saarbrücken location, the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), were able to identify the genes that bacteria need to form bottromycins. Now they were able to further unravel the underlying reactions in the bacterial cells.