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In a new study, an international research team shows that the very cotton buds, which we all got to know so intimately during the COVID-19 pandemic, are a valuable tool to map biodiversity. This was the result of an international research team led by scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH) in Greifswald, a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany. In essence, the researchers demonstrate that a vast multitude of birds and mammals can be detected by simply swabbing the DNA left behind by animals from leaves. They showcased the power of this approach in an ecosystem that hosts a ton of wildlife and where detecting animals has historically proven extremely challenging - the tropical rainforest. The study was published in Current Biology.

Prof Rolf Müller, the Founding and Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) and Professor of Pharmaceutical Bioltechnology at Saarland University, has been honoured with the prestigious Charles Thom Award. This award, given by the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB) and named after industrial microbiology and mycology pioneer Charles Thom, honours researchers for their exceptional merit in industrial microbiology and biotechnology, and their independence of thought and originality that added appreciably to scientific knowledge. The HIPS is a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in collaboration with Saarland University.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Minister of Science, Bettina Martin, announced today (July 31, 2023) in Greifswald 15 million euros of additional state funding for the construction of the Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH). In the interim laboratories of the HIOH, in the presence of the Rector of the University of Greifswald, Prof Katharina Riedel, and the founding director of the Helmholtz Institute for One Health, Prof Fabian Leendertz, she informed about the extended state funding for the new construction of the research center.

The constant rise in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has a major impact on global public health, urgently requiring novel strategies to prevent and treat bacterial infections. The development of effective vaccines represents an attractive cost-effective alternative to novel antibiotics and would be a game changer for patients. For many bacterial infections, especially those occurring on mucosal sites, no effective vaccines exist. Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), a pathogen residing in the stomach, is the cause of the most common chronic bacterial infection, affecting half of the world´s population, with a high risk to progress into gastric cancer. Therefore, among other gastrointestinal pathogens, H. pylori was declared as priority neglected AMR target pathogen by the WHO, requiring rapid intervention to counter AMR. Standard-of-care for H. pylori is still an antibiotic therapy combined with a proton pump inhibitor, and thus effective treatment of H. pylori infection is severely hampered by rising AMR.

The Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation's ForTra gGmbH for Research Transfer—the largest medicine-funding foundation in Germany—supports the legally compliant production of new drug candidates for direct use in first-in-human clinical trials. Five projects—including two antimicrobial drug discovery projects of the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF)—are now being funded with a total of three million euros. One of the funded drug candidates was discovered and co-developed at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig.

In his doctoral thesis at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), Chunlei Jiao has paved the way for the development of the CRISPR-based RNA detection and recording platforms known as LEOPARD and TIGER. LEOPARD is a CRISPR-based method that is highly multiplexable, with the potential to detect a variety of disease-related biomarkers in just one test. On the other hand, TIGER enables the recording of transient cellular events at the single-cell level. The Helmholtz Association honors this outstanding achievement with the Doctoral Prize in the research field Health. The HIRI is a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig in cooperation with the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg.