Newsroom

High-ranking visitors at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Hannover Medical School (MHH): Federal Minister of Research Anja Karliczek and Lower Saxony's Minister for Science and Culture Björn Thümler used their personal visit on 31 May 2018 to catch up on the state of modern infection research in Lower Saxony. They visited the study centre of the NAKO health study in Hannover, which is being coordinated by the HZI, and the TWINCORE, Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, an institution that is run jointly by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig and the Hannover Medical School.

30 young scientists came together from 16 – 20 April 2018 at Bayer in Berlin for the ENLIGHT-TEN summer school on translational research and medicines development. The summer school introduced the participants to the knowledge, philosophy and tools needed in translational research and medicine development, empowering them to make a difference in translational medicine. A faculty of 13 high profile professionals from Industry, Academia and Biotech introduced the basics of the medicines development process including real life case studies.

A new machine learning tool that can detect whether emerging strains of the bacterium, Salmonella are more likely to cause dangerous bloodstream infections rather than food poisoning has been developed. The tool, created by a scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and her collaborators at the University of Otago, New Zealand and the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research, a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Germany, greatly speeds up the process for identifying the genetic changes underlying new invasive types of Salmonella that are of public health concern.

Numerous pathogens are capable of becoming resistant to medications, such as antibiotics, which allows them to protect themselves from the antibiotics and to spread vigorously. Moreover, many diseases cannot be treated sufficiently because there are no effective drugs available. The search for new drugs is very laborious and resource-consuming. Natural products, so-called secondary metabolites, that are produced by bacteria, fungi and plants are some interesting candidates in this context. Especially soil-dwelling myxobacteria produce a large variety of natural agents which they use to eliminate microbial competitors or enemies. This is the special field of natural product researcher Prof Rolf Müller. Honouring his outstanding research aimed at the discovery of microbial natural products mainly from myxobacteria, the German pharmacist has been awarded this year's Inhoffen Award, to be presented on 17 May. Müller directs the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), a branch site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Saarland University.

In autumn 2017, Nigeria suspected an outbreak of human monkey pox. Immediately, epidemiologists adapted their online disease surveillance system and travelled to Nigeria to support the locals. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa revealed an urgent need of efficient disease surveillance systems, because it became evident that the outcome of an epidemic also depends on how fast disease control measures are implemented. HZI scientists from the Department of Epidemiology, led by Gérard Krause, teamed up with Nigerian scientists and developed a mobile-based application, which allows real-time data collection and application of disease control measures called Surveillance, Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System (SORMAS).

Antibiotics are still overprescribed in primary care and prescriptions are often not in line with the recommendations and guidelines set out by the medical associations. For this reason, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Hygienenetzwerk Südostniedersachsen, the City of Braunschweig, the Klinikum Braunschweig, and the AOK Niedersachsen have developed a project called "Effectiveness of training on antibiotic prescription routine for General Practitioners (GP)" (Wirksamkeit von Antibiotikaschulungen in der niedergelassenen Ärzteschaft, WASA) that is funded by the Federal Ministry of Health (Bundesministerium für Gesundheit, BMG).