Healthcare industry

Expert interview - 02/08/2017

Innovative diagnosis and treatment methods – regulation of their reimbursement in the German healthcare sector

The German healthcare cost reimbursement system differentiates between in- and outpatient medical products. In an interview with Caroline Ref and Jasmin Dabrowski from BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg, Michael Weißer, Chief Operating Officer of AiM GmbH in Lörrach, gives interesting insights into the reimbursement of medical care products, in particular with regard to the introduction of new and innovative diagnosis and treatment methods.

Article - 24/07/2017

Cancer medicine development as a science and industry partnership

The German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Bayer AG are collaborating on a strategic partnership focusing on the development of innovative cancer therapies. The two partners have developed an active substance which selectively blocks a mutation of a metabolic enzyme that occurs in certain types of cancer. The substance has been successfully tested in preclinical studies and is now also being tested in a clinical trial on patients with brain…

Article - 04/07/2017

Ruxolitinib – successful graft-versus-host disease treatment

Graft-versus-host disease is a serious complication in leukaemia patients who have been given a blood stem cell transplant from a genetically different person. Prof. Dr. Nikolas von Bubnoff and Prof. Dr. Robert Zeiser from the Department of Haematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation at Freiburg University Medical Centre initiated a Germany-wide study to show that an active substance called ruxolitinib has a promising therapeutic effect.…

Article - 26/06/2017

Hope for mRNA vaccines despite damper

The pressure is on to develop novel vaccines based on messenger RNA and aimed at combating cancer and protecting against pandemics. Although mRNA vaccination as a cancer monotherapy has suffered a setback this year, the industry is nevertheless confident that it will succeed because of existing proof that mRNA vaccines stimulate the body's immune defence.

Press release - 22/06/2017

MRI without contrast agents? Yes, with sugar!

Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), in collaboration with colleagues from Heidelberg University Hospital, have been able to visualize brain cancer using a novel MRI method. They use a simple sugar solution instead of conventional contrast agents, which can have side effects in the body.

Article - 12/06/2017

IHO: global consulting for the molecular diagnosis of leukaemia

IHO GmbH from Mannheim offers a professional solution for the international exchange of information and services concerning the molecular diagnosis of leukaemia. This drives forward the harmonisation of these methods and brings therapy monitoring to a new global level.

Article - 31/05/2017

Peritoneal cancer – long-term survival with good quality of life

Thanks to an innovative treatment procedure that has been in use since 2005, surgeons from Tübingen University Hospital have been able to prolong the survival of patients with peritoneal cancer and give them a higher quality of life. This is done using a technique based on complex surgery followed by immediate intraoperative local chemotherapy on the peritoneum.

TolerogenixX GmbH has developed a patented and clinically tested cell therapy technique for individualised immunosuppression in transplant patients. The technique enables the targeted disabling of undesired reactions caused by the immune system’s defences. As a seed stage investor, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) will finance this innovative technique and the preparations for Phase II of the clinical trial, which begins in spring 2018. Further…

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”.

Article - 20/04/2017

Health app to be integrated into clinical trials

Questionnaires are a thing of the past, now it is becoming increasingly likely that information for clinical trials will be collected via apps in the future. A new research platform has been developed to prepare patient data transmitted via smartphone applications. Doctors who are carrying out research will thus have access to more accurate results that will also ultimately benefit patients.

Article - 07/03/2017

KiTZ: Hopp Children’s Tumour Center at NCT Heidelberg

The Heidelberg University Hospital and the DKFZ have established the "Hopp Children's Tumor Center at NCT Heidelberg" (KiTZ) where doctors, scientists, nursing staff and other specialists work side by side on new diagnostic and therapeutic options to help children with cancer.

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 - 27/02/2017

Michael Baumann – the new man at the helm of the DKFZ

On 1st November 2016, Professor Michael Baumann, a radiation oncologist from Dresden, became the new chairman and scientific director of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. Michael Baumann has the perfect background when it comes to combining basic and applied cancer research. This enables scientific findings to be used more quickly and effectively for preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer, and patients’ individual needs to be…

Diagnosis - 13/02/2017

Idana: an anamnesis software that asks the right questions

Studies have shown that communication between doctors and patients is very important for doctors to be able to give a precise diagnosis and to increase patient acceptance of therapy. Unfortunately, doctors often do not have the time for in-depth conversations with their patients. A new anamnesis software called Idana looks set to change this situation. The software tailors questions specifically to individual patients and helps treating doctors…

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.

Article - 26/01/2017

Clinical cancer registration to improve patient treatment and care

Germany records around 500,000 new cases of cancer every year. The number is steadily growing, mainly due to an ageing population that leads to an increased risk of cancer. The German government is planning to establish clinical cancer registries in all German states so that all cancer patients receive the best possible treatment. In Baden-Württemberg, all new cancer cases are already recorded. However, the data are still not as comprehensive as…

The European Research Council awards Wilfried Weber an ERC Proof of Concept Grant. Wilfried Weber, Professor of Synthetic Biology at the University of Freiburg, has received a grant of roughly €150,000 for his project “Hide and Seek with Cancer Drugs” in which he is working to improve the drugs used in cancer treatment.

Dossier - 17/01/2017

Phytopharmaceuticals – fighting disease with natural substances

Phytopharmaceuticals are herbal medicines whose efficacy is down to one or several plant substances or active ingredients. They have been used for treating diseases since time immemorial. This traditional knowledge is still the basis for many medicinal products made from plants or parts thereof. Herbal medicines have been produced in Baden-Württemberg for many generations.

Acousia Therapeutics GmbH announced today the closing of a new investment round of EUR 2.5 million to finance research programs directed at the development of small molecules to treat sensorineural hearing loss and protecting sensory hair cells of the inner ear to prevent hearing loss in at-risk patients.

Article - 14/12/2016

Transcranial brain stimulation to counteract chronic tiredness

You may well be familiar with the ”leaden” feeling associated with lack of sleep. However, chronic tiredness lasting many months might be a sign of a serious disease. Dr. Lukas Frase, together with Prof. Dr. Christoph Nissen’s team at the Freiburg University Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, has come up with a method to help patients with abnormally high sleep needs. The method uses weak electrostimulation and has the…

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…

Article - 08/11/2016

Towards at-home genetic testing

The ability to detect a broad range of conditions and modifications in human, animal, plant and pathogen genes is highly important in the field of medicine for diagnosing diseases and starting therapy as quickly as possible. Chemists at the University of Konstanz have now developed a genetic test that does not need to be carried out in the laboratory and can be evaluated with the naked eye, similar to a pregnancy test. The test would therefore be…

Article - 26/10/2016

GeneWerk: precision analyses for humans

Gene therapy approaches are increasingly being used for treating life-threatening diseases in humans. GeneWerk GmbH, a spin-off of the DKFZ and the NCT in Heidelberg, offers customised, high-resolution molecular and bioinformatic analyses that ensure the efficacy and safety of gene therapy and immunotherapy studies.

European Health Science Match in Heidelberg
 - 19/10/2016

100 exciting health research projects

Around 600 people came to the ”European Health Science Match” conference in Heidelberg to listen to 100 leading up-and-coming researchers from all over Europe, each of whom had three minutes to present their current research projects on the diagnosis and therapy of disease.