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Clarivate Analytics, a company specialising in bibliometric data, publishes an annual list of researchers who have had a significant impact on their field by publishing several highly-cited papers over the last ten years. In 2022, three department leaders of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) made it onto the list of “Highly-cited researchers”: Bioinformatician Prof Alice McHardy, biotechnologist Prof Marc Stadler and biochemist Prof Jörg Vogel were recognised for their influence on their respective fields.

A dedicated building is being constructed in Hannover for the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM), a joint initiative of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Hannover Medical School (MHH). The groundbreaking ceremony for the new building with 2100 square metres of effective space was held today in the presence of numerous guests from politics and science. CiiM, which was initially founded in 2015 as a virtual centre, is addressing urgent challenges in infectious medicine with the aim of individual prognosis and diagnosis of infectious diseases and derived optimised and customised prevention and personalised therapy for the benefit of the individual patient. The construction costs are covered by the federal government, the state of Lower Saxony, the Helmholtz Association and the HZI.

The Faculty of Medicine has awarded Professor Dirk Heinz an honorary doctorate – for his outstanding achievements in the fields of structural biology and infection research as well as for his shaping the German research landscape for the better.

With the help of the eHealth system SORMAS (short for “Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System”), epidemics can be detected and contained at an early stage. For its contribution to global health, the system developed under the leadership of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig has now been rewarded with a place among the three finalists for the Zayed Sustainability Award 2023. The winner of the $600,000 prize will be selected in January 2023 from the three selected projects, which competed against more than 900 other projects in the health category.

Scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) and the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology (IMIB) in Würzburg want to better understand how the oral cavity germ Fusobacterium nucleatum is exactly linked to various cancer diseases. To unravel the molecular strategies of these bacteria, the team has developed new genetic tools. They discovered an adaptation factor that may help the microorganisms colonize tumor cells. The findings contribute to the search for new therapeutic targets and were published recently in the journal PNAS (The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

The Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND) is pleased to announce the participants of the second phase of the SPRIND Challenge "A Quantum Shift for New Antiviral Agents". Six teams will each receive up to 1.5 million for the next twelve months to further develop new drug candidates against viral diseases. The team “PROTAC-powered antivirals” led by Prof Mark Brönstrup, head of the department “Chemical Biology” at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, receives funding for the development of a platform for broadly effective antiviral agents. In addition, the team “Mucboost” with participation of Dr Christian Sieben, head of the junior research group “Nano Infection Biology” at the HZI, will continue to receive funding. The “CRISPR Antivirals” team includes two HZI researchers, Prof Chase Beisel, head of the department “RNA Synthetic Biology” at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), and Prof Claus-Michael Lehr, head of the department “Drug Delivery across Biological Barriers” at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS). HIRI and HIPS are HZI sites in cooperation with Julius Maximilians University (JMU) Würzburg and Saarland University, respectively.