The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) is an application-oriented Centre from the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, Germany's largest non-university scientific organisation. HZI carries out research on pathogens which are medically relevant or can be used as models for dissecting infection processes.

The activities of the Department of Vaccinology and Applied Microbiology are focused on the development and validation of prophylactic and therapeutic interventions to combat infectious diseases. Mouse models are ideally suited to perform a cost-efficient screening, selection and prioritisation of vaccine candidates. Thus, we provide infrastructure and expertise to perform pre-clinical studies in murine systems to assess the immunogenicity and efficacy of specific vaccine formulations. Furthermore, the HZI Illumina platform is exploited for the identification of biomarkers (biosignatures) of vaccine performance to assist in the GO/NO-GO decisions during pre-clinical and clinical development. The use of conventional and advanced murine vaccine validation models, together with the global analysis platform are expected to increase predictability, thereby accelerating translation.

The Department of Vaccinology & Applied Microbiology and the Illumina platform provide murine preclinical vaccine validation models and a global analysis platform for the identification of biosignatures, in order to increase predictability across the vaccine development pipeline and accelerate translation.

Main staff involved in the project

Carlos A. Guzmán is the Head of the Department of Vaccinology and Applied Microbiology at the HZI, and APL-Professor at the Hanover Medical School. The work of his team is focussed on the: (i) discovery of new adjuvants, (ii) establishment of experimental models for vaccine testing, and (iii) development of vaccine candidates against specific diseases.