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Most antibiotics used in human medicine originate from natural products derived from bacteria and other microbes. Novel microorganisms are therefore a promising source of new active compounds - also for the treatment of diseases such as cancer or viral infections. A team from the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) has now been able to isolate a completely new family of bacteria that has particularly high potential for the production of active substances. The researchers published their findings in the journal Chem.

A team led by Prof. Achim Hoerauf, University Hospital Bonn (UKB), in cooperation with the University of Bonn and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), is developing the antibiotic corallopyronin A (CorA) as a treatment for the neglected tropical diseases river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. They have now succeeded to enter into a partnership with the Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai and to raise a large amount of funding. The team's aim is to develop a safe and sustainably effective drug against these worm diseases, which are transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. The people affected mainly live in Africa and tropical regions and urgently need active ingredients that kill the long-lived adult worms. The project is now being funded with around €5.6 million by the Japanese Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund.

Lyme disease is the most common disease transmitted by tick bites in Germany. Whether a particular genetic predisposition plays a role in the development of the disease and which immunological processes in the body are involved is not yet sufficiently understood. A research team from the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM), a joint institution of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and Hannover Medical School (MHH), has now discovered a responsible gene variant and the immune parameters involved in cooperation with Radboud University Hospital (Radboundumc; Radboud Universitair Medisch Centrum) and Amsterdam UMC (both in the Netherlands). The researchers have published their findings in two studies. These have been published in the journal Nature Communications and BMC Infectious Diseases.

Dr Katarina Barley, Member of the European Parliament, visited the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig on Tuesday, 30 April 2024. She was accompanied by Braunschweig's Mayor Dr Thorsten Kornblum and other party colleagues. During the visit, the management of the HZI, led by Prof. Josef Penninger and Christian Scherf, presented the current research program and the future strategy of the center. They also provided insights into the management of research data and the use of artificial intelligence.

Today, around 70 students from years 5 to 9 visited the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig to get an idea of what it is like to work in a modern research facility. They got a taste of the world of science and its administration in ten scientific and two administrative departments.

The antimicrobial potential of CRISPR-Cas systems is promising, yet how to best design or implement CRISPR nucleases remains poorly understood. An international team led by the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg has now addressed this knowledge gap. The researchers conducted the first systematic interrogation of CRISPR antimicrobials using multidrug-resistant and hypervirulent bacteria as case studies, revealing wide variations in efficacy that could be predicted via high-throughput screening and machine learning. Their findings were published today in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.