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New antibiotics are urgently needed in the fight against multi-resistant bacteria. The recently discovered darobactin is a potential candidate with resistance-breaking properties. This substance shows very good antimicrobial activity against some of the most problematic hospital germs. However, so far darobactin could only be produced in relatively small quantities, making detailed investigation and further development difficult. A team led by Dr Sebastian Groß from the Department of Microbial Natural Products at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) in Saarbrücken has now addressed this problem. The scientists published their results in the journal Chemical Science.

Data Scientists are in demand on the job market: all 18 Helmholtz Centers have already advertised several positions calling for skills in AI methods in 2021.

Increasingly insensitive to standard drugs: Multi-resistant pathogens are spreading worldwide and even in the near future could threaten the safe treatment of deadly infectious diseases. However, the urgent demand for new antimicrobial agents is offset by a glaring lack of investment into their research. In an article in Nature Reviews Chemistry, the international research alliance IRAADD, which is coordinated by HZI researcher and HIPS director Prof Rolf Müller, presents forward-looking strategies that could be used to solve the problem. Scientists at the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) are playing a leading role.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has selected Prof Claus-Michael Lehr as a scout within the Henriette Herz Programme.This award allows him to select three young scientific talents from abroad who will work at HIPS for one year as Alexander von Humboldt fellows. In the interview, he explains how this came about and how important international collaboration in science is to him.

The oral cavity germ Fusobacterium nucleatum is known to speed up the growth of human carcinomas, for example in the intestine or breast. In a joint study, the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), and the Julius Maximilians University (JMU) in Würzburg, Germany, have now mapped the RNA molecules of five clinically relevant strains of this adaptable bacterium. The findings could help develop new therapies for various cancers. The results of the research have been published in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Immunosuppressed patients often cannot build up good protection after a vaccination because the necessary cells of the immune system function less well or are not present at all. This has been studied especially in the drug therapy of rheumatoid arthritis. Scientists from TWINCORE and the Hannover Medical School (MHH) have now published in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases the circumstances under which this group of people can nevertheless be successfully vaccinated. Based on their data, they recommend a promising strategy for the COVID-19 vaccination of rheumatism patients who are treated with the drug Rituximab. The TWINCORE-Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research is a joint institution of the MHH and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig.