Month: May 2023

The Pettenkofer Foundation, which has legal capacity and is administered by the Foundation Administration of the City of Munich, awards a research prize of 5,000 euros for outstanding scientific work on the following topic

The intestinal microbiome – from innovative functional analysis to interventions

Up to three outstanding papers published in the years 2020-2023 can be considered.

The original papers should have contributed to important scientific knowledge and/or be of particular clinical relevance.

The prize can be awarded to an individual as well as to a group. When submitting an individual paper, an assurance must be included that all co-authors of the submitted paper agree with the application.

An independent, expert jury decides on the award of the prize.

Please send the papers including curriculum vitae, scientific career and list of publications by e-mail by 30.06.2023 to the Max von Pettenkofer Institute, Pettenkofer Award 2023 Secretary, Pettenkoferstr. 9a, D-80336 Munich (pettenkoferpreis@mvp.uni-muenchen.de).

The prize money is provided by Roche Diagnostics Deutschland GmbH.

Click here for the call for entries (in German).

New publication by research groups Prof. Dr. R. Haas and Dr. W. Fischer

The increasing spread of resistance against antibiotics represents one of the most urgent challenges in infection medicine. Together with other bacteria, the World Health Organization has thus ranked Helicobacter pylori, the causative agent of diseases such as peptic ulcers or gastric cancer, as a high-priority pathogen for development of novel antibiotics. The LMU microbiologists Prof. Dr. Rainer Haas and Dr. Wolfgang Fischer, together with several collaboration partners and with support by the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), have now been able to show that the cellular respiration of these bacteria is extremely sensitive towards inhibitors of the docking site of quinone co-factors within respiratory complex I. Since other bacteria, including typical representatives of the intestinal microbiota, are much less susceptible to such compounds, this molecular target may provide a high potential for development of new drugs with pathogen-specific activity, if an in vivo efficacy can be shown.

The results of this study have been published in the journal Cell Chemical Biology.