Press releases

In the development of new medications and medical engineering, there is a gap between the discovery of new potential active ingredients and products and their further development into medicinal products and medical devices by the industry. The Helmholtz Association and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, together with the Deutsche Hochschulmedizin, have now jointly brought the Proof-of-Concept initiative into being. It promotes the translation of innovative, promising research projects.

A pioneering collaboration of three partners – Fraunhofer ITEM, the Hannover Medical School (MHH), and Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics (IfG) in Gold Coast, Australia – was officially launched on January 18, 2018. The aim of the collaborative project iCAIR is to develop new anti-infective drugs.

(Hannover, Germany) Bacteria worldwide keep developing new resistances to antibiotics. Alternative therapies are urgently needed to meet this challenge. To this end, the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM, Leibniz Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and Charité Research Organisation have teamed up and initiated the project “Phage4Cure”. The goal is to establish bacteriophages as an approved drug for treating bacterial infections. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding this project with almost four million euros over a period of three years.

The Hannover Science Initiative is celebrating its anniversary: for 10 years now, the 15 partners in the Initiative, among them Hannover’s nine universities and higher-education institutes, the Student Administration, science-affiliated institutions such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM, hannoverimpuls GmbH, and the State Capital of Hannover, have been successfully cooperating.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM have teamed up with colleagues from the Hannover Medical School (MHH) and Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics (IfG) in Gold Coast, Australia, in the iCAIR (Fraunhofer International Consortium for Anti-Infective Research) project. They have set themselves the ambitious goal of closing the gap from the discovery of new agents to their development by the pharmaceutical industry into potential medications and developing new anti-infective drugs.

(Hannover/Germany) The 40 million euro European project eTRANSAFE, kicked off at the end of September 2017, is aimed at speeding up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. Coordinated by the Fundació Institut Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM) and led by the pharmaceutical company Novartis, the project consortium is a public-private partnership of eight academic institutions, six SMEs, and twelve pharmaceutical companies. One of the project partners is Fraunhofer ITEM.

(Hannover) Together with representatives from industry, government and academia, Dr. Gabriele Heinen-Kljajić, Minister for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, and Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft inaugurated the High-Performance Center Translational Biomedical Engineering in Hannover on April 25.

(Hannover, Germany) After 21 years of successful leadership, Professor Uwe Heinrich ceded his position as Fraunhofer ITEM executive director to Professor Norbert Krug as of January 1, 2017.

(Hannover/Regensburg, Germany) Scientists of the Regensburg-based Project Group for Personalized Tumor Therapy (Fraunhofer ITEM/University of Regensburg) and colleagues from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai discovered new mechanisms of early metastatic spread in breast cancer. Results have been published in the latest issue of the renowned journal Nature (doi:10.1038/nature20785, doi:10.1038/nature20609).

(Hannover, Germany) The Fraunhofer Project Group for Personalized Tumor Therapy will become a division of the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM in Hannover as of January 2017 and will thus be included in the financing model of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.