©BNITM

Press release

Successful evaluation

"Excellent", "outstanding", "very good": the Senate of the Leibniz Association has recommended that the federal and state governments continue to fund the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) for a further seven years. According to the evaluation commission, the institute is extremely successful in research, care and teaching in the field of infectious diseases and tropical medicine with a focus on Africa.

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©VdF

Honouring

Doctoral prizes awarded

Structural biologist Dr Kristina Meier and physician Dr Michaela Raacke have submitted outstanding dissertations at the BNITM. The Association of Friends of the Tropical Institute (VdF) has honoured them with this year's doctoral prizes. They are endowed with 2,500 euros.

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The graphic shows the world map. Particularly affected areas near the equator are shown in dark red and red, India and North Africa in beige and the USA and large parts of Europe in light green: i.e. not affected.

©DNTDs

New survey

Not enough funding for NTD research

Worm diseases, gangrenous stomatitis, snakebite envenoming, dengue and many more: neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are primarily poverty-related diseases. In the Kigali Declaration, Germany committed itself to contributing to their control through increased research, but is falling short of expectations. This is the result of a study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the leadership of the BNITM.

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Graphical representation of the active centre in the TRANSCRIPTION-EARLY-ELONGATION structure. The residues of the L protein are marked and coloured according to the assigned domain (blue for the finger domain and coral red for the palm domain). The RNAs are shown as sticks and coloured as in A.

©Harry M. Williams et al. 2024

Publication

Thieves unmasked

BNITM researchers observed a phenuivirus stealing RNA caps from the host - an essential step in hijacking the host's protein factory. This is important for the virus to successfully replicate in the infected host cells. The results have been published in the scientific journal Nucleic Acids Research.

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Fluoreszenzaufnahme zeigt den Malariaparasiten in einem vielkernigen Entwicklungsstadium, wie er rote Blutzellen befallen hat.

Image credit: Immunity Cell Press | Hagadorn et al. 2024

Publication

Autoimmunity protects against malaria

Exciting new link between autoimmunity and malaria discovered, providing insight into the co-evolution of humans and malaria: BNITM researchers show that autoantibodies inhibit the growth of the malaria parasite and its invasion of red blood cells. The results were recently published in the journal Immunity.

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Colourful schematic of proteins in host cell cytosol uptake (HCCU)

Publication

Looking at the proteins of malaria parasites

In the blood stage of a malaria infection, the parasites hijack red blood cells and digest their contents. A BNITM research team has gained fundamental molecular biological insights into this digestive process, both into the uptake and transport of these substances into the parasite's food vacuole. The results of the study have been published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.

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