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Displaying results 71 to 73 of 73.
Innate Immunity and Infection
The moment a pathogen, which has successfully entered the body, is recognized, the body quickly mobilizes its defenses. Interferons are molecules that are counted among the body’s first line of defense. They prevent proliferation and the spread of viruses in the body and serve to alert the immune system. Read here about the different ways we use to try and decode this system, all in an effort to find new approaches to infectious disease prevention and therapy.
Anti-infectives from Microbiota
The department of Prof Christine Beemelmanns focuses on the identification and functional analysis of novel anti-infective natural products from microbial communities. Co-cultivation studies as well as cell-based assays in combination with chemical-analytical and molecular-biological methods are used to evaluate and prioritize novel natural product producers. The department uses established and innovative metabolomic-, activity and genome-based methods to identify and determine the structure of the secreted natural products. Based on the isolated novel natural substances, the functional analysis and evaluation of their range of effects is carried out. This department is located at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) .
Bacterial Infection Ecology
Microbial communities colonise many parts of our bodies, critically impacting our health such as by protecting against pathogens. But how the diverse microbes arrange and organise themselves to generate health effects is largely unknown. To tackle this challenge, we are developing methods to map the structure of the microbiome and resolve how this structure affects health benefits. In addition, we study how microbiota influence and manipulate us, aiming for real translational and clinical potential including the development of probiotic anti-infectives and microbiota-inspired immunotherapeutics.
