Newsroom

Infections with Clostridioides difficile (for short: C. difficile) are often recurrent, because dormant stages of the bacterium persist in the intestine. Thus far, there was no drug that can effectively combat the dormant stages as well. A current One Health study led by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute (FLI) now shows that a natural product called chlorotonil A can do just that. The study was conducted in close cooperation with the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), a site of the HZI in collaboration with Saarland University, Greifswald University and the Leibniz Institute DSMZ - German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH. The research team hopes that chlorotonil A will be a candidate drug that might significantly reduce the risk of reinfection with C. difficile in the future. The study was published in the scientific journal Cell Host & Microbe.

On the World Day for Laboratory Animals April 24, 2023, special attention is paid to the use of animals for research and development of products for humans. In drug research, among other areas, extensive animal testing is a firmly prescribed part of the approval process for new drugs. However, a reduction in the number of laboratory animals is increasingly in sight due to new approaches. At the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in collaboration with Saarland University, researchers are successfully developing alternative models and have already received awards for their work.

Dr Yannic Bartsch's TWINCORE junior research group "Antiviral Antibody Omics" is being funded as a Helmholtz Young Investigator Group (HYIG). Over the next five years, the immunologist will receive a total of 1.5 million euros, half of which will be funded by the Helmholtz Association and half by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig. Bartsch already began his work at TWINCORE in January. He is researching the role of antibody responses in infections.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically demonstrated that the development of effective agents against viral pathogens is of great importance for global health. Although effective vaccines are available for many viral diseases, there is an urgent need for new and effective therapeutic treatments. At the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), the team led by Prof Rolf Müller is researching novel active substances for the treatment of infections. In their latest studies, the researchers were able to identify two new natural product families with promising activity against viruses. Their results have now been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to severe disease in some people, whereas others do not get ill or only experience mild disease. What causes these differences is not fully understood. It is already known that an overactive innate immune system is causing severe COVID-19 disease, but it is unclear how this is regulated. A team led by Prof Yang Li, Director at the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM) and head of department “Computational Biology for Individualised Medicine” at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), has come a step closer to answering this question. The researchers addressed the question to what extent the course of disease is genetically or epigenetically regulated. The CiiM is a joint initiative by the HZI and Hannover Medical School (MHH). In addition to Li, the team included other scientists from the HZI and the RESIST cluster of excellence.