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Even after the COVID-19 pandemic, infectious diseases remain among the greatest challenges to global health. At the same time, advances in biomedical research, data-driven methods, and clinical innovation are opening up new opportunities to tailor prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to individual patients. How these approaches can be translated into medical care was the focus of the 2nd International Conference on Individualized Infection Medicine, which took place from March 19 to 21, 2026, at Herrenhausen Palace in Hannover.

Dr. Lina Herhaus has been awarded the Otto Meyerhof Award of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM e.V.) at the 77th Mosbacher Kolloquium of the GBM. The prize, endowed with €5,000 and funded by Boehringer Ingelheim, was presented for the seventh time and recognizes outstanding early-career scientists conducting research in Germany in fields relevant to the GBM within biochemistry and molecular biology. The award commemorates the world-renowned physiologist and biochemist Otto Meyerhof, who worked in Kiel, Berlin, and Heidelberg before being forced to flee Germany in 1938 as a Jewish scientist.

Just in time for today’s World Tuberculosis Day, the new S3 guideline on tuberculosis prevention among newly arrived migrants has gone online at the Association of Scientific Medical Societies (AWMF). Commissioned by the German Respiratory Society (DGP), it was developed under the leadership of the German Central Committee for Tuberculosis Control (DZK) and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI). Over the past three years, a team of experts from the fields of public health and individual medicine worked together with affected individuals to improve tuberculosis screening—and thus prevention—in Germany. The guideline was funded by the Innovation Fund of the Joint Federal Committee (G-BA).

The European Academy of Microbiology (EAM) has announced the election of 95 new Fellows to the network. Among the newly elected members is Prof. Susanne Häußler, head of the department “Molecular Bacteriology” at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and at the TWINCORE – Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, a joint institution of the HZI and Hannover Medical School. Häußler studies multidrug-resistant pathogens and chronic, persistent biofilm-associated infections.

INFORBIO is a multidisciplinary project that combines participatory forest management by indigenous communities, agroforestry, the establishment of mobile health clinics, and the development of an early warning system for zoonotic disease surveillance through a multifaceted One Health approach. The overarching goal is to safeguard forests as natural barriers against the spread of zoonotic diseases while improving livelihoods in remote areas of the Central African Republic (CAR) and Cameroon. As part of INFORBIO, researchers at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH), a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), are developing early warning systems for zoonoses.

The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) welcomes the acquisition of the Braunschweig site of the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine (ITEM) by AveThera GmbH, effective March 16, 2026, as an important step for the region and particularly for the Science Campus Braunschweig-Süd. Core competencies in pharmaceutical biotechnology will remain in Braunschweig, while the Science Campus will be further strengthened as a center for the development and manufacturing of modern biopharmaceutical products.