Press releases

The Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM has now been officially accredited by AAALAC International (Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International). This underlines the institute’s commitment to a responsible, ethical, and humane use of animals in research – going beyond legal requirements.

Approximately five million people worldwide suffer from chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Despite modern therapies, many immunological mechanisms underlying the disease remain poorly understood – posing a key challenge for the development of new targeted treatments.

Fraunhofer ITEM has been officially included in the list of so-called Article 36 organizations – an important step for our role in the European research landscape for food safety.

How many birch pollen particles in the air trigger symptoms in individuals with allergies? A recent study published in the journal International Archives of Allergy and Immunology provides an answer: allergic symptoms occur at concentrations of 50 - 100 pollen per cubic meter of air.

Targeted nerve stimulation instead of drugs: With the kick-off of the PREPARE project DUSTIN, a promising research alliance for the visionary treatment of autoimmune diseases is starting its work. Four Fraunhofer Institutes are pooling their expertise to develop a miniaturized, battery-free implant that communicates and is powered by ultrasound. The project is receiving €3.5 million in funding.

The Pharmaceutical Biotechnology division at the Braunschweig location of the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM, one of the institute’s five research divisions at three different locations, is to be closed as of February 28, 2026. The research division has been operating at an ongoing deficit, with little likelihood of this changing in the future. The executive board of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has now approved the request to this effect made by the institute management. One possible solution for maintaining the Braunschweig location remains – the transfer to a private company.

A research team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM has, for the first time, demonstrated that drug concentrations in the human lung can be measured directly via particles in exhaled breath – a breakthrough with major implications for the targeted development and optimization of inhaled therapies. For this groundbreaking study, Prof. Dr. Jens Hohlfeld, Head of Airway Research at Fraunhofer ITEM, together with Dr. Olaf Holz, received the prestigious Willi Stahlhofen Award from the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine (ISAM). The award ceremony took place on June 24 at the ISAM Congress in Washington DC, USA.

Dr. Steinacher completed her doctoral studies with a dissertation conducted in collaboration between MHH, Fraunhofer ITEM, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG in Basel. The work was supervised by Dr. Lauriane Cabon (Roche) and Prof. Dr. Armin Braun (Fraunhofer ITEM). She was awarded one of the two doctoral prizes of the Society of Friends of MHH e.V., each worth €2,500.

What drives the metastasis of melanomas right from the very beginning – long before it becomes clinically detectable? This is the question the research teams addressed in their publication in Nature Cancer.

Traditional storage solutions are reaching their limits in light of the steadily in-creasing volume of data generated worldwide. In the BIOSYNTH project, three Fraunhofer institutes are developing a microchip platform for future mass data storage using synthetic DNA. In this interview, Dr. Uwe Vogel, the project’s co-ordinator and head of the Microdisplays and Sensors department at the Fraun-hofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS, explains how the researchers plan to widen the use of this high throughput-capable, modular system for synthesizing DNA, RNA and peptides to also include biological applications such as screening for harmful substances and development of active ingredi-ents.