Healthcare industry

Article - 28/08/2017

SpinDiag GmbH – rapid test makes it difficult for pathogens

Antibiotic-resistant pathogens are becoming an increasing problem, especially in hospitals. Infected patients must be isolated as soon as possible. However, appropriate methods for testing patients upon admission to hospital and isolating them if necessary are still lacking. A young biotechnology company from Baden-Württemberg called SpinDiag GmbH has developed a cost-effective method for the rapid testing of microbial resistance in normal…

The Freiburg-based startup SpinDiag GmbH recently closed a 1.6 Mio. EUR seed-round with three private investors. The team developed a revolutionary point-of-care screening system for testing patients for antibiotic-resistant bacteria at their admission to hospitals and almost instantly so. The seed-capital will make it feasible to bring SpinDiag’s system from its current laboratory environment to first tests in hospitals.

Article - 26/04/2017

Chaperones disassemble Parkinson’s disease-specific amyloid fibrils

Amyloid fibrils consisting of clumped α-synuclein protein are characteristic of Parkinson's disease. Chaperones, which ensure the correct folding of newly synthesised polypeptides, can inhibit α-synuclein aggregation and, as a consequence, prevent fibrils from forming. Researchers from Heidelberg have shown that a specific combination of human molecular chaperones is able to disassemble fibrils and transform them into non-toxic α-synuclein…

Prenatal diagnosis - 23/03/2017

Microdroplets for safe and rapid prenatal diagnoses

Although the methods used to carry out amniocentesis are quite sophisticated, there is still a 0.5 percent risk of miscarriage following the intervention. Therefore, an EU-funded project called AngeLab is developing a rapid test that only requires a blood sample of the mother rather than amniotic fluid. The test yields information on the genetic health of the foetus within only a few hours. As part of the project, researchers from the…

Article - 02/03/2017

Personalised antibiotics therapy: fewer antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Antibiotics have long been used as all-purpose weapons against infectious diseases – too often and too early, as we now know. This tendency has caused many bacteria to become resistant to standard antibiotics. The search for new substance classes has proved quite difficult. Care must therefore be taken to use existing antibiotics prudently in order to reduce the number of bacteria becoming resistant to them in the long term. Researchers from…

Article - 23/02/2017

Rentschler places formulation on biopharmaceuticals production agenda with LEUKOCARE alliance

On February 2, 2017, Rentschler Biotechnologie and LEUKOCARE announced a strategic alliance in which LEUKOCARE will become the exclusive formulation developer for the Laupheim-based contract manufacturer. Rentschler will acquire a 10% stake in LEUKOCARE, a biotech company established in 2003 and headquartered in Martinsried. On behalf of BIOPRO, Walter Pytlik spoke with the two CEOs, Rentschler’s Dr. Frank Mathias and LEUKOCARE’s Michael Scholl…

The next generation of Antiviral Therapies: Led by Stichting Participatie Atriva together with High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), Atriva Therapeutics GmbH has received seed financing from Dutch and German private investors to advance Atriva’s antiviral MEK-Inhibitors (Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase inhibitor) against Influenza into the clinical development stage.

Press release - 13/12/2016

Early-diagnosis systems from Baden-Württemberg help prevent the spread of drug-resistant pathogens

More and more bacteria are developing resistance to multiple antimicrobial drugs. These multidrug-resistant bacteria can impede the action of common antibiotics via mutations or DNA transfer. More than 30,000 people are infected every year with multidrug-resistant bacteria in German hospitals alone. This could be prevented with appropriate hygiene measures and innovative test systems. Innovative test systems that enable reliable and rapid…

Expert interview - 14/11/2016

The great untapped potential of herbal medicines

Baden-Württemberg is home to a large number of companies that produce herbal medicines, i.e. preparations made from plant extracts rather than pure compounds. In an interview with Dr. Ariane Pott from BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg, Professor Dr. Michael Wink, Director of the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg, explains how these special extracts are placed on the market and how they differ from medicines…

Article - 12/09/2016

New target for the therapy of hepatocellular carcinoma discovered

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the second most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide. If the tumour is at an advanced stage, doctors have few treatment options. Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Lars Zender from the University of Tübingen have now identified one of the cancer's Achilles' heels, namely, the interaction between C-MYC and AURKA proteins, which can be destabilised with a drug, thus killing cancer cells.

Article - 18/08/2016

Moonlighting proteins can make bacteria pathogenic

The mechanism underlying the export of biomolecules from cells remains unknown. Prof. Dr. Friedrich Götz and his team at the Institute of Microbial Genetics at the University of Tübingen have found out that staphylococci can turn into dangerous pathogens by excreting normally harmless enzymes. The researchers believe that the enigmatic excretion of such enzymes is due to a completely new mechanism and are thus planning to carry out further…

Article - 19/07/2016

Licence to kill – the enormous potential of CAR T cells

With 6 million euros of EU funding, the CARAT project aims to optimise a technology called CAR T that is used to equip T cells with antibody fragments and specifically direct them to destroy cancer cells. The CARAT consortium comprises a multinational team of experts from the Institute for Cell- and Gene Therapy at the Freiburg University Medical Center led by Prof. Dr. Toni Cathomen and seven partner institutions. Cathomen’s team is developing…

Article - 30/06/2016

Why fasting is good for health

A protein in the nucleus of liver cells is produced in greater quantities when we go hungry; it limits fatty acid uptake and adjusts the metabolism in the liver. However in people with metabolic disorders, the abnormal expression of this protein (GADD45β), which was previously only known to be involved in the regulation of cell division and DNA repair, leads to a dysregulated fat and sugar metabolism. Scientists from the DKFZ and Helmholtz…

Company profile - 27/06/2016

Atriva Therapeutics GmbH: new ways to treat influenza

Influenza viruses constantly change and mutate. This makes treatment difficult and vaccination rather touch and go. But what about targeting virus-manipulated cell events rather than using the virus itself as drug target? Atriva Therapeutics GmbH, a start-up company from Tübingen, shows how this works.

Article - 20/06/2016

New diagnostic tool for greater health safety when dealing with multidrug-resistant pathogens

Infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and diseases such as breast or colon cancer are among the major causes of death worldwide. Early diagnosis is therefore key for the identification of people affected and for providing immediate therapy. The R&D service provider Hahn-Schickard and its partners are currently working on the development of a rapid and simple diagnostic system that can detect life-threatening infections and cancer at…

Researcher profile - 13/06/2016

Matthias Willmann wants to get the big picture – tracking down infectious agents

While fighting and curing bacterial infections in sick patients is one part of the picture, epidemiological investigation of the spread of pathogens is another. Dr. Matthias Willmann also assesses the impact of these factors on the healthcare system as a whole and draws conclusions that might boost early detection of pathogens and prevention of infections.

Article - 26/04/2016

Methadone for cancer treatment? Clinical trials are needed to prove the effectiveness of this opioid

Claudia Friesen, an oncologist at Ulm University Hospital, has achieved what many scientists dream of: she has made a discovery that has increased existing knowledge, and can be used to help people. People with cancers that are resistant to all conventional therapies who have been given methadone for pain relief in combination with conventional chemo- or radiation therapy, have reported that tumours have shrunk or disappeared completely. Clinical…

Article - 25/04/2016

Pancreatic cancer and its resistance to therapy

Pancreatic tumours are among the cancers with the worst prognosis. In many cases they are resistant to treatment. Prof. Dr. Andreas Trumpp and his colleagues from the DKFZ and the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine HI-STEM have discovered that the reason why some pancreatic tumours are so resistant to treatment is down to larger quantities of the enzyme CYP3A5 in subtypes of pancreatic cancer. Molecular…

Article - 19/10/2015

New compound that may kill hospital germs is close to clinical testing

Bacteria's increasing resistance to antibiotics is a very serious medical issue. An infection with pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria can be life-threatening for hospital patients because MRSA has become resistant to the most commonly used antibiotics. Although reserve antibiotics are available in cases where others have lost their ability to control or kill bacterial growth effectively, they do not…

Article - 17/08/2015

CDT – a bacterial toxin that mediates its own delivery into cells

Clostridium difficile is totally harmless in healthy people. However, in combination with antibiotics it can cause severe diarrhoea and intestinal inflammation in elderly and debilitated people. But how does the spore-forming, rod-shaped bacterium deploy its power? And how does it enter the cell? Dr. Panagiotis Papatheodorou and his colleagues from the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (Director: Prof. Dr. Klaus…

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…

Article - 11/05/2015

How Lactobacillus bacteria fight Candida albicans infections

Fungal infections of skin and mucous membranes are relatively common. Around 75 percent of the human population lives with Candida albicans, a fungus that has no harmful effects in people with an intact immune system that can fight off systemic infections. However, in people with immune systems that have been weakened by antibiotics or radiotherapy for example C. albicans infections can lead to sepsis which may even be life-threatening. Prof. Dr.…

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