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On March 10, 2024, Prof. Tobias Welte, Director of the Clinic for Pneumology and Infectiology at Hannover Medical School (MHH), passed away unexpectedly at the age of 64. Welte was a long-standing close cooperation partner in joint research projects between the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the MHH, which resulted in numerous publications in renowned research journals.

The human cytomegalovirus, HCMV for short, lies dormant unnoticed in the body of most people for their entire lives. In immunocompromised individuals, however, the virus can cause life-threatening infections. It infects dendritic cells, a specific type of cell in the immune system. Although the majority of them are infected, only a few of them immediately execute the virus's genetic programme. Researchers at TWINCORE, Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, have now been able to show which signalling pathways of the innate immune system the virus is targeting in order to have itself produced by the host cells. They have published their findings in the journal Nature Communications. The TWINCORE is a joint institution of Hannover Medical School (MHH) and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig.

Improving health care and strengthening personalized medicine: A new research center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and causal methods in medicine (CAIMed - Lower Saxony Center for Artificial Intelligence and Causal Methods in Medicine) is being established in Lower Saxony. Researchers in computer science and medicine from Hannover, Göttingen and Braunschweig will develop innovative methods and applications of artificial intelligence. The Ministry of Science and Culture and the Volkswagen Foundation are providing 15 million euros from the joint "zukunft.niedersachsen" program for the next five years. Prof Wolfgang Nejdl from the L3S Research Centre at the Leibniz University of Hanover (LUH) will act as spokesperson. Two of the new research groups will be set up at sites of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI).

The list of “Highly-cited researchers” is published annually by Clarivate Analytics to honor scientists who have made a particularly significant impact in their fields. Five heads of department at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) are among the honorees in 2023: bioinformaticians Prof Alice McHardy, Prof Yang Li and Prof Andreas Keller, biotechnologist Prof Marc Stadler and the Scientific Director of the HZI and geneticist Prof Josef Penninger were recognized for their scientific publications in the past year.

It was previously believed that herpesviruses use certain body cells to replicate and other body cells to remain dormant, that is to remain inactive for a longer period of time. This dogma is now being questioned using the example of cytomegalovirus (CMV), a herpesvirus from the beta-herpesvirus subfamily, which can be fatal in immunocompromised transplant recipients. In a new study, scientists from the “Viral Immunology” department at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig have discovered that certain connective tissue cells (fibroblasts) are not only used by CMV for replication, as previously assumed. Apparently, CMV can also remain latent in the fibroblasts. The prevailing picture of an either/or - either the CMV uses a certain type of body cell for proliferation, or it remains in an inactive state there - is therefore no longer tenable. A second paradigm shift suggested by the study is the regulation of the CMV latency in cells: Apparently, the virus controls the use of fibroblasts as sites of latent or active infection not only via factors present in the cell, but also via an interaction with the immune system. The results were published in the renowned journal Nature Communications.