Healthcare industry

Things that work on a small scale are not necessarily as successful on a large one. It takes a lot of patience and money to scale up analytical or therapeutic processes from the laboratory to industrial production. A new platform consisting of several building blocks minimises the costs.

If the environment is right and both sides are genuinely interested in working together then the cooperation between biologists and engineers will lead to top technologies. One example of such cooperations is the bioreactors of the Department of Cell Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart.

The Albstadt-Sigmaringen University of Applied Sciences has been successful in the states Innovative Projects Cooperative Projects 2007 programme. Two research projects will receive funding totalling almost 225000 euros.

Neurologists at the University Hospital of Mannheim are the central points of contact of the largest European stroke project to date. The European Union is providing more than 21 million euros over five years for research focusing on stroke.

Of twelve applications which qualified for the decisive final round of the top cluster competion two are from the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan area the Forum Organic Electronics cluster and the Cell-Based Molecular Medicine biotechnology cluster.

Revenues of the Carl Zeiss Group in the 200607 tax year rose seven percent to EUR 2604 million. The Carl Zeiss Group generates approximately 83 per cent of its business outside Germany. Once again the strongest area was the semiconductor business.

The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering ISPE awarded Pfizer in Illertissen municipal district of Neu Ulm the Facility of the Year Award in the process innovation category for its fully-automated production plant.

The directors of the Tübingen Max Planck Institute MPI for Developmental Biology are pleased to have a Leibniz prizewinner in their ranks for the second year running. Dr. Elisa Izaurralde and her colleague Dr. Elena Conti have both been awarded the 2008 prize for their outstanding work in the field of RNA research.

The Federal Ministry of Research and Education BMBF announced that the top cluster proposal Medical Technology and Health TuttlingenNeckar-Alb MedCare TechArea has qualified for the second round of the Top Cluster competition which is part of the governments high-tech strategy.

Nils Johnssons work focuses on communication research involving living objects. The 48-year-old biochemist is investigating how proteins manage the complicated process of cytokinesis the division of the cell plasma. Thanks to a specific method Johnsson is able to detect when proteins are interacting with each other.

Heinz Schaller of the Centre for Molecular Biology at the University of Heidelberg ZMBH was awarded the Löffler Frosch Medal for his research on viral infections. He was co-founder of the biotechnology company Biogen.

Christiane Pelzer and Ingrid Kassner biologists at the University of Constance recently discovered a previously unknown protein that plays a role in the binding of ubiquitin to target proteins. This discovery is a milestone in the research of basic enzymatic processes.

The major focus of the planned research initiative is precompetitive and application-oriented basic and initial research.

Article - 09/03/2008

Successful attack on resistant tumour cells

In laboratory experiments Dr. Anja Apel from the University Hospital in Heidelberg proved that cancer cells that are resistant to radiation therapy can be made to become susceptible to this kind of treatment again by blocking the cells own recycling system.

The German Health Regions Network association was instituted on the 14th February 2008. The association acknowledges the growing importance of the health care industry and hopes to strengthen it with a particular focus on the project-related cooperation between the German health regions.

Since the 1st March 2008 the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at the University Hospital in Heidelberg has a new medical director Professor Dr. Hans-Ulrich Kauczor 45 succeeds Professor Dr. Günter Kauffmann.

Manfred Hönig paediatrist from Ulm University Childrens Hospital has received the Friedrich Linneweh Award for the promotion of young scientists in the field of paedriatrics. Hönig received the prize for his research on the development of immune cells.

Red biotechnology became commercially successful because process engineering succeeded in expressing foreign genes in microorganisms and got a grip on cells tissue cells were not only cultivated using technical methods but also purified for medical application on an industrial scale. However the biopharmaceutical industry is now facing rising costs.

The leaders of the two countries research policy groups met in the French capital to discuss strategies on how to cope with challenges that are faced by both countries in the field of research. Several Agreements signed at the end of the Forum are the basis of strategic partnerships.

The history of Bt-maize is a strange mix of opportunities risks scientific contradictions market authorisations and recalls. It is also an excellent example of why the public scepticism towards genetically modified organisms GMO is growing.

The latest ranking of the Centre for Higher Education Development CHE awarded two gold medals and one silver medal to the Freiburg Faculty of Biology. The CHE awarded approximately 500 departments at some 250 universities in 20 European countries.

The Heidelberg-based start-up company S-DH GmbH which is active in the field of neutron optics has recently acquired large orders from the USA England and Japan clearly asserting itself as a serious force agains international competition.

The Dietmar Hopp Foundation has donated one million euro for a new small-animal tomograph at the University Hospital in Heidelberg. The new system is suitable for small animals such as rats and mice and can be used to investigate diseases and therapies.

The Expert Commission for Research and Innovation EFI established by the German government presented its first report on research innovation and technological capabilities to Chancellor Angela Merkel and Federal Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan.

The professorship is unique in Europe In January 2008 Bernd Pichler received an endowed chair from the Werner Siemens Foundation for developing new non-invasive imaging methods for research and clinic. The engineer is in charge of the Laboratory for Preclinical Imaging and Imaging Technology at the University Hospital in Tübingen.