Projects

Helicobacter pylori, Campylobacter jejuni, and Campylobacter coli are among the most widespread bacterial pathogens and responsible for annually hundreds of thousands of cases of diarrhoea, intestinal inflammation, gastric ulcers and stomach cancer worldwide. The research group led by Christine ...

In this project, the scientists develop genetically engineered phage lysins and specific bacteriocins for the elimination of hospital germs such as Staphylococcus aureus, they clarify mechanisms of potential resistance mechanisms, and they analyse whether broad-spectrum or specifically acting agents ...

More than 230 million people are infected and 600 million are at risk of infection with schistosomiasis, which ranks top in terms of disability-adjusted life years (3.3 million DALYs) among neglected tropical diseases. Over 90 percent of those requiring treatment for schistosomiasis live in Africa ...

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and other epidemics in recent decades have highlighted the need to develop effective measures to combat emerging infectious diseases in a timely manner. For most emerging viral pathogens, no vaccines or antiviral drugs are yet available. Since it is difficult to predict which ...

This project prepares the preclinical development of the semi-synthetic chlorotonil derivative dehalogenil for the treatment of bacterial infections caused by Gram-positive pathogens. Dehalogenil impresses with its potent and very rapid antibacterial effect, which is triggered by membrane ...

The PAACT project (short for: Precision Access to Antibiotic Compounds and Targets) serves as a hub within the DZIF for the discovery and characterisation of new antibacterial agents and lead structures. In the context of the project, the development pipeline of antibiotic candidates is continuously ...

In the current WHO list of bacterial priority pathogens (WHO BPPL 2024), the World Health Organisation classifies carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria as a high-priority pathogen, which means there is an urgent need for new anti-infectives to combat this problematic bacterium. To ...

The bacterial pathogens Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae are the most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs) leading to infertility in women. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 89 million new infections with genital chlamydia and 78 million infections with ...

The challenge of antibiotic drug development today is the discovery and optimisation of novel bioactive compounds that do not show cross-resistances with clinically applied antibiotics, ideally due to a novel mode of action (MoA) which adresses unexploited microbial targets. In the case of ...

Implementation of evidence-based infection control practices to reduce healthcare-associated infection remains a national and international priority. R-Net investigates the effect of various interventions aimed at limiting the spread of infections due to multi-drug resistant organisms (MDRO) ...