Healthcare industry

Dossier - 16/12/2021

Advanced therapy medicinal products: gene and cell therapies

Novel gene and cell therapies for treating incurable and hereditary diseases have raised high expectations. However, success has so far been limited to the long-established bone marrow transplants involving the administration of haematopoietic stem cells used to treat blood cancer. CAR T-cell therapies have recently emerged as a major new hope in cancer treatment.

Article - 18/12/2012

Gene therapy medicinal products: the first gene therapy product has been approved – where does the future lie?

Is gene therapy close to broad clinical application? Following negative headlines at the end of the 1990s gene therapy had almost disappeared from the public radar to become an issue almost exclusively dealt with by research laboratories. Gene therapy has now reappeared in the public domain since the European Medicines Agency EMA gave the Dutch biotech company uniQure the go-ahead for the application of somatic gene therapy for the treatment of a…

Article - 28/07/2014

Successes and setbacks of clinical gene therapy

The use of retroviral haematopoietic stem cell gene therapy to treat hereditary immunodeficiencies has achieved great success in resolving the actual symptoms of the disease, but many of the patients that underwent therapy developed leukaemia later. Effective gene therapies involving gene shuttles that do not cause cancer are therefore required. The good news is that such therapies already exist.

Article - 17/02/2009

Tissue engineering companies and EU obstacles

With the new regulation on advanced therapy medicinal products the European Union has tried to establish legal certainty with regard to gene therapy somatic cell therapy and tissue engineering products. However Dr. Heinz W. Joseph of TETEC AG is sure that the new guidelines will lead to problems for small and medium-sized companies.

Article - 23/04/2009

Cancer therapy targets angiogenesis

The idea of starving tumours by interrupting their blood supply has despite initial drawbacks generated the production of blockbuster drugs and is now a major RD focus for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. But the biological effects are more complicated than originally expected.

Article - 04/08/2014

Europe’s first gene therapy

Scientists from the National Center for Tumour Diseases (NCT) have shown that adeno-associated viruses (AAV) do not pose a cancer risk. This conclusion is based on the analysis of several million patient cells treated with AAV and the finding that the viruses do not integrate into the patient genome. AAV is the first-ever gene therapy for clinical use in the Western world. AAV vectors could also potentially be used as prototypes for the treatment…

The German Society for Medical Physics DGMP has awarded its science prize to the medical physicist Gerhard Glatting for his research into the specific irradiation of tumour tissue using radioactively labelled antibodies.

Dossier - 10/03/2014

Cancer therapy and cancer diagnostics

Thanks to improved diagnostics and therapy, today’s cancer patients can live considerably longer than patients several years ago. Nevertheless, some cancers, especially the strongly metastatic ones, are difficult to treat. Therapies targeting immune cells or cancer stem cells could potentially improve the current situation. The early detection and classification of tumours is crucial for the successful treatment of the disease, and molecular…

Press release - 08/01/2009

ILM – Laser Therapy Centre

The study carried out by the ILM investigates the fractional irradiation of wrinkles and scars using an Erbium:YAG handpiece.

Article - 20/01/2020

Brain tumour patients could benefit from heavy ion therapy

Glioblastoma is a malignant brain tumour. It does not respond anywhere near as well to conventional forms of therapy than other tumours because it contains particularly resistant cancer cells. Scientists at the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT) at Heidelberg University Hospital and the German Cancer Research Center have shown that heavy ion therapy is effective against these cells.

Company profile - 26/07/2018

evid - therapy recommendations at a glance

There are over 700 treatment guidelines in Germany alone, and each is up to several hundred pages long. Can doctors still stay on top of things? A start-up company from Mannheim called evid is developing a software that can retrieve relevant therapy recommendations for individual patients from the huge pile of paperwork. In March 2018, the founding trio won first place of the eHealthForum Freiburg start-up competition.

Proposals can be submitted up until 9th April 2008.

Press release - 08/01/2009

ILM – Laser Therapy Centre

The Laser Therapy Centre (LTZ) possesses numerous medical laser systems of different wavelengths and pulse structures. In cooperation with medical laser device manufacturers, the ILM is actively involved in the development of new lasers and laser applications.

Dossier - 10/11/2014

Cell and gene therapies: from bench to bedside

While cell therapy has become standard treatment for a number of blood cancers, most cell and gene therapy approaches for the treatment of hereditary and metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative disorders and cancer are still in the experimental phases or early clinical trials. However, recent successes give rise to the hope that cell and gene therapies will in future make important contributions to previously incurable diseases.

The test detects K-RAS mutations and could be an additional tool for targeted therapies of patients with colorectal cancer who stand to benefit from newly developed cancer therapies that rely on the genotype of the K-RAS oncogene.

Press release - 20/08/2012

Viruses with integrated gene switch

Scientists of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) with colleagues from the University of Konstanz have developed “RNA switches” which allow them to specifically turn on and off genes in viruses. This will help to enhance regulation of gene therapy and viral therapy of cancer.

Article - 30/04/2012

German Cardiac Society meeting 2012 - Medicine for sick hearts

The recent German Cardiac Society meeting in Mannheim in April 2012 focused on the latest findings related to the prognosis, diagnosis and therapy of heart diseases. While great progress has been made in the therapy of disease symptoms, it will still take a long time before gene and stem cell therapies that target the causes of disease find their way into clinical application. The conference also presented the new German Centre for Cardiovascular…

Article - 22/12/2014

Large-scale urology project: cell therapy for the treatment of stress incontinence

The first and so far only clinical DFG research group on urology is being coordinated by a team from Tübingen. The team is developing a cell-based therapy for the regeneration of the urethral sphincter. Clinicians, life scientists and engineers are working together to try and find a causal therapy of stress incontinence.

The new Clinical Research Unit Heavy ion therapy in radiooncology headed up by Professor Dr. Oliver Jäkel from the University Hospital of Heidelberg hopes to find an answer to the question of the relative importance of ion therapy in radiotherapy.

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.

Article - 19/11/2009

Cellzome - kinase inhibitors for therapy

Cellzome is a privately-owned biotechnology company which develops new drugs for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and chronic inflammatory intestinal diseases at its two company sites in Heidelberg (Germany) and Cambridge (UK).

Almost half of the veins transplanted to restore blood flow in the heart become clogged again within ten years after surgery. Gene therapy pre-treatment of the vein fragments that prevents the muscle cells from entering the vascular wall might decrease the risk of this happening.

Article - 30/03/2009

Innovative sunscreen for noninvasive therapies

The importance of sunlight for human health becomes particularly obvious when people do not receive sufficient sunlight. A prime example of this is rachitis also known as English disease which is caused by vitamin D deficiency. However the exposure to too much sunlight can also be dangerous. The Empfingen-based company HelioVital has now developed a special film that enables the therapeutic use of the positive effects of sunlight without causing…

Press release - 14/12/2011

Towards a Therapy to Healing Stroke

The thalamus is the central translator in the brain: Specialized nerve cells (neurons) receive information from the sensory organs, process it, and transmit it deep into the brain. Researchers from the Institute of Toxicology and Genetics (ITG) of KIT have now identified the genetic factors Lhx2 and Lhx9 responsible for the development of these neurons. Their results contribute to understanding the development of the thalamus. In the long term,…

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.