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Hepatitis B is a viral infection of the liver that can lead to cancer and organ failure. Antiviral therapies can suppress the infection, but a functional cure is rare. Novel immunotherapies may lead to an actual cure more often. However, it is still unclear which patients benefit most from these new therapies. Researchers at the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM), a joint institution of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Hannover Medical School (MHH), as well as the MHH and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), have now identified a biomarker that intends to enable predictions about the success of the therapy. The results were published in the scientific journal Gut.

The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (MI4) at McGill University in Montréal, Canada, are organising a joint symposium on personalised infection medicine on 29 November. Three researchers from each of the two institutions will give lectures on various topics of personalised infection medicine. The keynote lecture will be given by Prof Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of BioNTech SE. The symposium kicks off McGill University's “Infection and Immunity Week”, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year. Interested scientists can register to follow the event online.

Ahead of the “World Antimicrobial Awareness Week” (November 18-24) 20 national and international organizations from academia, healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry appealed today to G7 governments to step up efforts to tackle the problem of growing antibiotic resistance. Their "Joint Statement on Strengthening the Antibiotic R&D Pipeline by Rewarding Innovation" stresses that only an approach involving both the public and private sectors is likely to succeed. The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), which both signed the statement.

Researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and partners from the University of Bordeaux have established a mechanism that regulates the migration of individual cells. The study was recently published in Nature Cell Biology and discussed in an accompanying article by renowned experts.

The Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND) has announced the participants of the first SPRIND Challenge “A Quantum Leap for New Antiviral Agents”. From 45 applications from Germany and Europe, the jury selected a total of nine teams. Prof Mark Brönstrup from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and Prof Chase Beisel from the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), a joint institution of the HZI with the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), convinced the jury with the projects they led. The HZI scientists Prof Carlos A. Guzmán and Dr Christian Sieben are involved in two other projects as cooperation partners. The teams will each receive up to 700,000 euros in the first year of the three-year competition to develop new drug candidates against viral diseases.