Newsroom

An increasing number of bacteria are developing resistance to commonly used antibiotics, making it imperative to advance research into new antibiotics for clinical and medical use. Olga Kalinina, the new endowed professor for substance bioinformatics, is dedicating herself to this task. Since January this year, the scientist has been based at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), a branch site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Saarland University, working on developing new antibiotics from biologically active natural substances. Her research will be supported until 2022 by the Klaus Faber Foundation in Saarbrücken, with a total of 1.6 million euros.

The treatment of hepatitis C has been based on specific effective antiviral medications for a number of years. Since future development of resistance cannot be ruled out, alternative treatment options are being researched as well. So-called cell entry inhibitors are considered to be promising candidates. In combined efforts with colleagues from the Leibniz University Hannover, scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the TWINCORE pinpointed the target site on the virus and developed improved drug candidates. Their study has recently been published in the Journal of Hepatology.

Dendritic cells act as the guardians of our immune system. They are lurking for foreign invaders, swallow them, break them into pieces and present the fragments on the cell surface. When the dendritic cells and their pathogen fragments come into contact with specialised white blood cells, called T cells, these T cells are activated and they can destroy the infected cells. Researchers from TWINCORE, a joint facility of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Hannover Medical School (MHH), have now discovered how the uptake of antigens and presentation of antigen fragments on human dendritic cells are regulated in terms of time and space. These findings form the foundation for the development of improved vaccines. The study has just been published in the journal Blood Advances.

On 20 February 2019, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and Evotec AG announced their cooperation, scheduled for three years initially. They aim to develop new antibiotics that overcome resistant bacterial pathogens – a global health threat. The research activities will initially focus on the optimisation of cystobactamids, which are natural anti-bacterial substances that have a novel chemical scaffold and are effective against the most harmful Gram-negative bacteria. The research cooperation with Evotec resulted from an intensive preceding cooperation of the HZI, its Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland, and the Leibniz University Hannover, supported by the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF).

For the characterization of new bioactive metabolites from tropical Basidiomycetes, a division of fungi, Dr Clara Chepkirui of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Brunswick was awarded this year’s DECHEMA-Doktorandenpreis für Naturstoff-Forschung. While doing her doctorate in the HZI department Microbial Drugs, headed by Prof Marc Stadler, Chepkirui discovered the microporenic acids, which proved effective against bacterial biofilms.

He was one of the most versatile German researchers and a popular representative of science. Manfred Eigen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and one of the founders of the Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung in Braunschweig – today the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI). Manfred Eigen died on 6 February, 2019, at the age of 91.