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The Super Striker: How herpesviruses dribble out the immune system
If we imagine viruses and human immune cells as opposing soccer teams, we would observe a spectacular game: The viruses have barely gained possession of the ball and they are already storming down the field towards their goal. If the defence players and goalie of the…
Joining forces against resistant pathogens
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global health threat with the currently available therapeutics becoming more and more obsolete due to AMR. In 2019, an estimated 1.27 million deaths were directly attributable to bacterial AMR, with an estimated 4.95 million…
Better safe than sorry – especially regarding infectious diseases
Mr. Pietschmann, what makes hepatitis C so dangerous? That the infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) often goes unnoticed. The virus is transmitted over blood, nowadays especially in the drug milieu, when people share needles. It causes a chronic infection that can…
Customised, efficient, universal: vaccines 2.0
Physicians have been using the basic principle of vaccination for centuries: They purposefully expose the body to a killed or attenuated pathogen, and the subsequently developed memory immune response prevents a more severe course of the disease following reencounter…
Malicious at the turn of a button
How do harmless bacteria turn into dangerous pathogens? This is a question researchers at the German Research Centre for Biotechnology (GBF) in Braunschweig are currently investigating. Using the common food germ, Listeria monocytogenes, the scientists have identified a…
Versatile Bacteria Toxin
Some aggressive bacteria are capable of penetrating human body cells and then destroy them from the inside. Just how this is done, for example, by the food germ, Listeria monocytogenes, has been studied by a team of scientists from the German Research Centre for…
Vitamin D puts a brake on activated macrophages
When macrophages, the first line defender cells of the immune system become activated, they produce an inhibitor, which acts back on them to suppress their activity. This has been revealed by the work of scientists at the German Research Centre for Biotechnology (GBF)…
Life-sustaining stuff
Heme is the pigment responsible for the red colour of blood. All humans and animals need heme because it alone transports life-sustaining oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body. Scientists of the GBF and the Technical University in Braunschweig have resolved…
A Shot to Stop Diabetes in Mice
Some forms of diabetes could feasibly be prevented. Scientists at the German Research Centre for Biotechnology (GBF) in Braunschweig recently were able to do just that in experiments with mice. Animals with a congenital susceptibility for Type-1 diabetes remained…