Healthcare industry

Apogenix GmbH a biopharmaceutical company announced the closing of its second financing round. dievini Hopp BioTech holding GmbH Co. KG the investment company of SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp was the main investor.

Article - 05/11/2009

CLAIR provides new insights

The human eye is a fascinating organ as well as model for the specialists at Stockach-based Sensovation AG. Their complex optical detection systems are based on CCD and CMOS technologies. However a high-tech sensor is able to recognise much more than many eyes put together.

Personalised Medicine - 04/05/2017

Big data make therapy work better

An international team of researchers has shown for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) that cancer therapy can be personalised using big data. The authors of the study “believe this paper is a step towards validation of genetic techniques as a route to personalised medicine”.

Press release - 01/12/2009

Stefan Wiemann elected new spokesman of the German Genome Research Network

Associate Professor (PD) Dr. Stefan Wiemann of the German Cancer Research Centre (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) has been elected spokesman of the Project Committee of the National Genome Research Network. This funding programme supports projects in medical genome research aimed at fighting relevant widespread diseases.

Press release - 04/02/2010

Signalling pathway in cancer cells needs acid: new targets for tailor-made therapies?

The Wnt signalling pathway plays an important role in embryonic development, in stem cells and also in diseases such as cancer. Some of the individual steps of this signalling pathway are not yet known in detail including in particular the mechanism by which the Wnt protein activates the Wnt receptor during binding. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Centre (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now made a substantial contribution…

Article - 12/12/2011

siRNA in cancer therapy : Tübingen researchers awarded prize by the German Society of Thoracic Surgery

Short ribonucleic acid molecules only 21 nucleotides long are providing new impulses for lung cancer treatment. A team of doctors and biologists from the University of Tübingen have been awarded a prize by the German Society of Thoracic Surgery for their research on siRNA.

Article - 30/04/2011

The DKFZ-ZMBH Alliance

The strategic alliance between the cell and tumour biology research priority at the German Cancer Research Center and the Center for Molecular Biology at Universität Heidelberg has led to the development of one of the largest centres of basic biomedical research in Germany. The top international profile of this interdisciplinary institution located at the interface between molecular and cellular biology tumour biology and biomedicine is reflected…

Professor Roland Schuele from the University Womens Hospital in Freiburg originally studied biochemistry. Nowadays Schuele is researching the development of prostate cancer. During his scientific career he has learnt that research cannot be steered in a particular direction. It develops and we follow it said Schuele who has been able to gain astonishing insights into the molecular processes in tumour cells.

Press release - 31/03/2009

Cancer researcher from Heidelberg awarded the Dr. Hella Bühler Prize

Dr. Ronald Koschny assistant doctor in the Department of Gastroenterology at the University Hospital in Heidelberg was awarded the Dr. Hella Bühler Prize. Koschny received the prize which comes with a cheque for 100000 euros for his groundbreaking work on finding new therapies in particular therapies for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Dossier - 13/04/2015

Boosting the immune system can improve cancer prevention and treatment

The activation of the body’s immune system to fight cancer is not only a promising therapeutic concept, but is already used in medical practice. The first immunotherapies have been approved and many more are either in the experimental stages or already undergoing clinical testing. Vaccines to prevent certain types of cancer are already being used successfully around the world.

Article - 14/03/2011

Synthesising proteins from non-natural building blocks?

Dr. Birgit Wiltschi from the University of Freiburg has been awarded funding from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science Research and the Arts under the Biotechnology and Medical Technology Idea Competition for a highly ambitious project she wants to learn how proteins can be modified using non-natural building blocks that will enable the engineered proteins to specifically target receptors on cancer cells amongst other things.

Article - 07/11/2011

Daniel Gebhard – a new chapter in the mitochondrial theory of aging

It has been known for quite some time that skin aging and skin cancer are connected with UV radiation. It is believed that mutations in the mitochondrial DNA are major contributors to aging and cancer, which is why in-depth knowledge about the repair mechanisms of skin cells is essential. Daniel Gebhard, doctoral student at Albstadt-Sigmaringen University, is investigating the repair capacity of mtDNA in different human skin cell types. He is…

Article - 09/01/2012

Nutritional medicine: Can certain foods help treat cancer?

Researchers at the Centre for Nutritional Medicine (ZEM), a joint institution of the Universities of Hohenheim and Tübingen, are investigating whether and to what extent certain food components can support the treatment of cancer and are hoping to derive scientifically founded dietary recommendations from their findings.

Press release - 23/07/2009

Mannheim Medical Centre – leading cancer laboratory and clinical research centre

Mannheim is the only medical centre in Germany to fulfil the criteria of an affiliated centre of EORTC. According to a recent EORTC report Mannheim is the only German centre that has fulfilled the organisations high quality criteria over the last three years.

Press release - 19/11/2010

Affimed enrols first patients in Phase I Hodgkin’s lymphoma study

The Heidelberg-based biotech company Affimed Therapeutics AG announced on 15th November 2010 that the first Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients have been treated with the AFM13 TandAb® antibody in a Phase I clinical study. Thus, the “first-in-man” tetravalent, bispecific antibody based on the company’s proprietary RECRUIT-TandAb® antibody technology has entered the clinic.

Renal cell carcinoma is a rare disease. In addition, the disease is difficult to treat, and the majority of pharmaceutical companies find the development of new drugs for its treatment too financially risky. Their argument: the market is too small to make up for the high development costs. The Tübingen biotech company immatics was courageous enough to do so and will now be rewarded. The immatics scientists have developed a therapy that not only…

Article - 27/07/2015

Looking for the Achilles’ heel of the tumour

Although medicines that inhibit the growth of cancer cells are available, the prognosis for patients with solid tumours is generally still rather poor. The reason for this is that tumour cells develop resistance to therapy during treatment, and the tumour can continue to grow. However, tumours are vulnerable – if only more robust medicines were available. Prof. Dr. Lars Zender, senior physician and head of the Division of Translational…

Researchers from Heidelberg have discovered that certain oxygen compounds are produced in greater quantities in the body due to cancer or inflammation and that this leads to the alteration of a protein that controls the flexibility and adaptability of certain immune cells.

Dossier - 20/12/2010

Environmental toxins: effect and origin

Environmental toxins, also referred to as xenobiotics, are chemicals that do not occur in biological substance cycles; they are difficult to degrade and often have a toxic effect. Xenobiotic substances are becoming an increasing problem because we are constantly exposed to them and because they slowly but surely poison us. The World Health Organisation (WHO) sees xenobiotic substances as factors that contribute, along with other factors, to the…

Press release - 03/11/2015

CureVac raises $110 Million in a private placement

CureVac, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering the field of mRNA-based technology, today announces that it has raised about $110 million (€100 million) to enable accelerated expansion of its industry-leading messenger RNA (mRNA) development platform and clinical-stage pipeline. CureVac also announces the change of its corporate legal form to a joint stock company, Aktiengesellschaft (AG).

Article - 22/10/2019

Using CAR T cells for treating cancer

After successes in the treatment of advanced blood cancers, CAR T-cell immunotherapy has become a major beacon of hope in oncology. The first therapies have received regulatory approval. Despite their success, these immunotherapies can have serious side effects. The company AVA Lifescience develops antibodies with high tumour specificity to use as the basis for effective precision-guided CAR T-cell therapies that are better tolerated by patients.

The Heidelberg team of 16 students has achieved an outstanding result at the renowned iGEM competition organised by the MIT in Boston. The team won the largest number of prizes with its project Ecolicence to Kill including a gold medal for their scientific work.

Article - 21/08/2009

Patenting and clinical trials go hand in hand

Back when he was doing his degree thesis at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg the immunologist Prof. Peter Öhlschläger who now works at the University of Constance laid down the basic principles for developing an artificial gene for the treatment of cervical cancer. Prof. Öhlschläger is currently in the process of filing a patent for DNA vaccines for HPV. In the following interview the scientist says that the greatest challenges are…

Press release - 10/12/2012

Sex hormone induces elongation of stem cell telomeres

The telomere ends of chromosomes become shorter with any cell division round. This is why the lifespan of most cells is limited. One of several exceptions to this rule is the haematopoietic stem cells of the bone marrow. The enzyme telomerase enables them compensate telomere attrition. However defective telomerase function can cause bone marrow failure disorders such as aplastic anaemia amongst others. Prof. Dr. Uwe Martens from the SLK Hospital…

Article - 08/04/2013

The first major cell migration

It is of crucial importance that cells stick tightly together where their function requires them to do so for example in organs such as the heart and the liver to name but two examples. However it is equally crucial that cells start to migrate at some stage during embryonic development in order to form such organs. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Driever from the Institute of Biology I at the University of Freiburg and his team have elucidated the molecular…