Press

The AIOLOS project (Artificial Intelligence Tools for Outbreak Detection and Response) has received approval from the French and German governments to develop a digital platform designed to allow for early detection of new respiratory pathogens epidemics, monitor their spread and inform decisions on appropriate counter measures. AIOLOS will provide insights for private and public decision-making in a web-based dashboard, which leverages real-time data from multiple data sources, advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and predictive modeling. Sanofi in France and the Fraunhofer Institutes SCAI and ITMP in Germany lead the consortium, which includes four other French and German partners: CompuGroup Medical, Quinten Health, Impact Healthcare and umlaut, part of Accenture. The project is supported by the French State and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in the context of the Franco-German call on Artificial Intelligence technologies for risk prevention, crisis management and resilience. This call for projects operated by Bpifrance, on behalf of the French government as part of the France 2030 investment plan, and by DLR Projektträger, aims to support innovation projects between France and Germany on artificial intelligence technologies.

Neurological complications associated with COVID-19 have been observed frequently. Although SARS-CoV-2 may be abundant in brain tissue of patients, its pathways of entry and the resulting consequences are not well understood. A team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) has now shown that cells of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) can be infected in vitro by the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. The BBB is an important interface between the peripheral vasculature and the central nervous system. In addition, a test system based on human pluripotent stem cells has been developed to screen therapeutics for their effectiveness in attenuating this infection. The study results were published today in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

Patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria suffer from regularly recurring itchy wheals that appear on the skin with no clear cause. Frequently, additional swelling occurs in the facial area, so-called angioedema, which can persist for one to two days. Unfortunately, standard therapy with antihistamines is not efficacious in many patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria. However, these patients can now draw hope as a new drug yields promising results in a clinical trial involving Fraunhofer ITMP.

In August 2021, after several years of research at Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, a team of scientists has spun-off and created Phialogics, a preclinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to the development of innovative biologics to treat autoimmune diseases.

Funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Fraunhofer ITMP, IAIS and IGD, as part of the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence for Immune-Mediated Diseases CIMD, together with 25 European partners, are researching an insufficiently understood disease that affects millions of people - psoriatic arthritis - in the "HIPPOCRATES" project.

Fraunhofer launches a new research project, the „e-Pille“, designed to streamline the formulation of new drugs for oral delivery.

Addressing intracellular signal transduction disorders caused by viral or bacterial infections, and the therapy of inflammatory diseases are the main goals of the Frankfurt biomedicine cluster ENABLE, in which Fraunhofer ITMP is also involved. The Hessian state government will fund this project for four years with a total of eight million euros in order to prepare it successfully for the next round of the federal and state excellence strategy.

Fraunhofer ITMP is pioneering the development of a new class of active sub-stances in the PROXIDRUGS project together with seven regional partners, under the leadership of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. The project has now been designated as a cluster for future by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and will be funded with up to 15 million euros.

The European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP-RD), established within the Horizon 2020 European Research Framework Program, brings together over 130 institutions from 35 countries. It has focused on preclinical research to develop effective therapies for rare diseases and will now fund two new European consortia with participation of Fraunhofer ITMP called CureMILS and TreatKCNQ with a total of over 3.6 million euros. The aim of the research projects is to develop therapies against two rare diseases in children.

In 2012, a Fraunhofer project group for Translational Medicine and Pharmacol-ogy TMP was established at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in association with the LOEWE program (Hessian Initiative for the Development of Scientific-Economic Excellence). The aim of this group was to expand the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s portfolio in the field of drug re-search and development. Over the last number of years, the former Fraunhofer project group TMP has achieved international recognition in the area of im-mune disorders due to its extensive expertise in areas such as drug identifica-tion, pharmaceutical technology, highly differentiated and indication-specific pharmacological models, and clinical research. As a result of these advances, the TMP branch of Fraunhofer IME is set to become an independent institute with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main and locations in Hamburg and Göttingen as of January 1, 2021.