The German-Australian iCAIR® project

These days, even a “simple” infection can become a deadly threat again. Bacteria keep developing new resistances to antibiotics, presenting the international medical community with a significant problem. There is a desperate need for new medications. The biggest hurdle in developing these new medications is getting them from the laboratory into clinical trials, bridging the gap from the discovery of new agents to their development by the pharmaceutical industry into potential medications. In the project iCAIR® (Fraunhofer International Consortium for Anti-Infective Research), researchers from Fraunhofer ITEM, the Hannover Medical School, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, and Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics in Gold Coast, Australia, have teamed up to close this gap.

As a close-knit research alliance, iCAIR^® is working on the development of anti-infective therapies that take new treatment options all the way from the identification of potentially beneficial substances to the preclinical proof of concept. In selected lighthouse projects, iCAIR^® is establishing and demonstrating its position as an expert preclinical development platform for new anti-infective drugs. One objective of these projects is to target new treatments to combat the pathogens Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Aspergillus fumigatus, Neisseria meningitidis, different respiratory viruses such as the human parainfluenza and influenza viruses, RSV, and corona viruses, and develop these treatments to the point of preclinical proof of concept.

The development platform established in the iCAIR^® project will be made available to external partners in addition to its use in proprietary projects. This is geared towards contract research in the pharmaceutical industry as well as small and medium-sized enterprises and publicly funded projects. iCAIR^® thereby enables them to develop their early-stage compounds to the stage of preclinical proof of concept ready to go into regulatory development for market approval or, depending on the business model, out-licensing to big pharmaceutical players. Either way, iCAIR^® contributes to filling the empty pipelines in anti-infective drug development to address the current global threat of antimicrobial resistance and new infectious diseases.

Thanks to the pooled expertise of the four partners, the iCAIR^® consortium is in a position to identify completely new active agents against relevant and often deadly pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Aspergillus fumigatus and to develop them to candidate drugs. Another strategy will be to identify new compounds that are effective against known viral targets such as hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) and neuraminidase (NA). These are highly relevant in the progression of human parainfluenza virus and influenza infections. iCAIR^® will use selected lighthouse projects to establish and demonstrate its position as an expert preclinical development platform for new anti-infective drugs. Working on these lighthouse projects, the partners will set up their common structures. The aim is to demonstrate the pooled expertise of the iCAIR^® consortium – from target identification to the preclinical proof of concept – by way of new candidate drugs.