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The Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH) was ceremoniously founded on 26 April 2022 in Greifswald. The HIOH is a new institute of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, which is being established together with the University of Greifswald, the Greifswald University Medicine and the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health (FLI) as local founding partners. The founding director is the veterinarian and microbiologist Prof Fabian Leendertz. Research at the new institute will focus on the threats posed by the emergence of pathogens, as well as the epidemiology and ecology of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to common medicines and vaccines.

The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research has set itself the goal of finding new diagnostic methods, new active substances and new therapies against infectious diseases. Here you can find out why we cannot forgo animal experiments in our research.

The human gut is colonized by countless microorganisms. Could some of them protect humans from infections? Principal Investigator Alexander Westermann aims to better understand the interaction between host cells, gut bacteria and pathogens. He now receives funding of 1.5 million euros for his research project “GUT-CHECK” from the European Research Council (ERC). Westermann is the fourth group leader at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg to be awarded an ERC grant.

Though it has been eclipsed lately by SARS-CoV-2, there is another global epidemic still threatening people: HIV/AIDS. According to UNAIDS, a United Nations initiative, some 38 million people worldwide are currently infected with HIV. Almost as many have died as a result of AIDS since the outbreak of the HIV pandemic in the 1980s. In the search for new approaches to antiviral therapies, scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Berlin have now developed a new technology that can be used to analyze and impact key stages of the HIV life cycle. Their findings were published today in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

The bacterium Escherichia coli is found in the human intestine, and elsewhere. There it is harmless, but in certain conditions it can become a pathogen. It can cause bladder infections or even sepsis. A team of researchers led by RESIST professor Marco Galardini at TWINCORE - Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, a joint facility of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and the Hannover Medical School (MHH), together with colleagues from the medical faculty of the University of Paris, has now investigated whether certain genes of the bacterium are associated with the severity of the diseases caused. They have now published their findings in the journal PLOS Genetics.

What tasks need to be done today, and which is the most urgent? People have to constantly set priorities in their daily life. Bacteria are no different: They too must prioritize when combating viruses with CRISPR. However, it was unclear how this prioritization takes place. Scientists from the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg, a joint venture of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and the Julius Maximilian University (JMU) Würzburg, in cooperation with researchers from the universities of Würzburg, Freiburg and Leipzig, have now described an underlying mechanism for the first time. Their study was published in the journal Nature Microbiology.