Newsroom

Bacteria show a wide range of capabilities in withstanding antibiotic treatment or attack by our immune system, which are great challenges in infection research. Scientists at the Würzburg-based Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), have developed a novel approach to reading the activity of hundreds of genes in an individual bacterium by sequencing its RNA. This groundbreaking work was just published in the journal Nature Microbiology. Using bacterial single-cell RNA sequencing it might be possible to elucidate the tricks bacteria use to develop resistance and close these loopholes with tailored drugs.

The new consortium CARE (Corona Accelerated R&D in Europe), supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) public-private partnership, announced its launch today to accelerate the discovery and development of urgently needed medicines to treat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. With a grant totalling € 77.7 million, CARE is funded by cash contributions from the European Union (EU) and cash and in-kind contributions from eleven European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) companies and three IMI-Associated Partners. CARE is a five-year project bringing together 37 partners from Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, and is led by VRI-Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Paris, France), Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Beerse, Belgium), and Takeda Pharmaceuticals International AG (Zurich, Switzerland). It integrates partners’ COVID-19 projects ongoing since February 2020.

Contrary to what has been generally assumed so far, a severe course of COVID-19 does not solely result in a strong immune reaction – rather, the immune response is caught in a continuous loop of activation and inhibition. Experts from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the University of Bonn, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), along with colleagues from a nationwide research network, present these findings in the scientific journal Cell.

Who has overcome an infection with the virus without noticing, and how many people have already produced protective antibodies against the new coronavirus? Various antibody studies are now under way that will provide information on immunity or seroprevalence in the population. However, in order to compare these studies in a timely and reliable manner and provide a comprehensive evaluation, the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) is building a platform that gathers the methodology and results of the tests and makes the data available to interested researchers. The project “LEOSS.sero-survey” will be led by scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and implemented in collaboration with Helmholtz Federated IT Services (HIFIS).

The intestinal microbiota plays a central role for human physiology. Traditional studies have focused on the changes in microbiota composition under diverse conditions. Recently, efforts shifted towards understanding the molecular biology of intestinal bacteria. The species Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B. theta) has emerged as a model organism for human intestinal microbiota research. Scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) have captured a detailed map of RNAs and their activities in these anaerobic bacteria. The HIRI is a joint institution of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. The results can be browsed in an online database and were published in the journal Nature Communications.

With the aim of obtaining a better overview of the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 infections, a nationwide antibody study conducted by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) was launched in the district of Reutlingen at the beginning of July. Alongside four other antibody tests, a new detection method being jointly developed by the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen in Reutlingen and the HZI is also being used to determine the immune status within the population. The test centre, at which representative blood samples are taken, has been set up at the heart of Reutlingen.