Press releases

The Department of Drug Design and Target Validation at the Fraunhofer IZI is being awarded a €400,000 grant from the State of Saxony-Anhalt to develop new carrier systems for the gene-based treatment of inflammatory diseases. The project will be conducted in close collaboration with Lipocalyx GmbH based in Halle.

Since January 2017, researchers from Immunic GmbH have been working with scientists at the Department of Drug Design and Target Validation of the Fraunhofer IZI in Halle (Saale) on developing new drugs. The aim is the preclinical development of one or several active candidate ingredients for treating chronically inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Physicists at Leipzig's Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology and Leipzig University have found and characterized innovative materials which may be used as adaptive substrates in cell therapy. In their research, the scientists used synthetic DNA tubes to specifically modify the mechanics of polymer networks. The scientists published their findings in the renowned specialist journal Physical Review Letters.

Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

On 23 September 2016, Saxony-Anhalt's Minister for Economic Affairs and Science Jörg Felgner visited the Fraunhofer IMWS, where he announced the approval of three grants worth a total of 1.2 million euros. One of these grants will be used to support the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology in its project "Micro and nanoparticle-based application systems for active ingredients in dentalcosmetic and therapeutic applications".

On 20 September 2016, Professor Susanne Aileen Funke, Vice President of Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HaW Coburg), and Professor Frank Emmrich, Director of the Fraunhofer IZI, concluded a cooperation agreement between the two research institutes.

On 18 July, two algae from the CCCryo Biobank, kept by the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology at the Potsdam-Golm site, returned from their almost two-year mission at the International Space Station (ISS). They form part of an illustrious "tour group" of archaebacteria, algae, lichens, mosses and fungi that spent most of their mission on the outside of the ISS and now hope to reveal whether, and how well, they survived their stay.

Within the framework of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions, Dr. Jana Burkhardt has been granted funding in the form of a Global Individual Fellowship provided by the European Union. Amounting to €240,000 over a period of three years, the fellowship supports the transfer of knowledge concerning the development of new anti-tumor therapies between McMaster University, which ranks among Canada's top three universities, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology.