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Jun Prof Jesko Köhnke heads the junior research group “Structural Biology of Biosynthetic Enzymes” at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI). Together with his team of three, he researches the biosynthesis of natural products. His current research on an antibiotically active natural product called bottromycin has led to the discovery of a new enzyme group. He tells us in our interview what makes it so special and what this has to do with oranges and lemons. The results of the research have been published in the scientific journal Nature Chemical Biology.

The Leibniz Institute for New Materials (INM), Saarland University (UdS) and the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) are launching the Leibniz Science Campus “Living Therapeutic Materials” on 1 July 2020. In a competitive process, the Leibniz Association approved a grant of 900,000 € for joint research into new materials for the personalised administration of biotherapeutics, based at the Saarland campus. In addition to the funding from the Leibniz Association, the INM, the HIPS and the UdS are also contributing around three million euros to the project from their own funds. Furthermore, the State Chancellery is also contributing an additional 400,000 €.

Prof Anna K. H. Hirsch recently received a prestigious European grant with a total funding volume of 3.2 million euros to initiate an Innovative Training Network (ITN) in the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions. Hirsch leads the department Drug Design and Optimization at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) in Saarbrücken, a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) on the campus of the Saarland University.

Scientific data indicate that many COVID-19 cases are not recorded due to mild or asymptomatic infections. For this reason, there is at the time no sufficient data on how many people in Germany have already been infected and thus have established a presumed immunity against SARS-CoV-2. However, these data play an important role in assessing and forecasting the further course of the pandemic.

Virologists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig have identified a crucial survival factor in viruses. Their results were recently published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and could lead to a paradigm shift in virus immunology.