"We are under immense pressure here, especially because the pharmaceutical industry is no longer or hardly doing any research in this direction," DZIF project manager timo jager told the dpa news agency on the occasion of the facility’s inauguration on wednesday.
The reason is that infectious disease research is not the place to develop blockbuster drugs that guarantee pharmaceutical companies billions in sales. "That’s why university research is even more in demand there."
Active substances and antibiotics had to be developed to a point that had not previously been achieved in research and was also not feasible, said jager. "This is what we can and want to achieve with this new type of alliance, in that we not only have the basic researchers on board, but also the clinics and the doctors who are close to the patients."
32 leading german research institutes join forces in the DZIF. "Mainly and primarily, it’s about developing new vaccines and new antibiotics, and also improving diagnostics."There are working groups and projects spread across germany at every location, in which basic researchers, chemists, biologists and clinics work together. In addition, clinicians are to devote one year exclusively to research in a trainee program and further establish infectious diseases as a specialty.
The DZIF is one of six centers of expertise planned by the federal government. These are also intended to advance german research in an international comparison. "In the context of infectious disease research, i see germany more in the middle mab at the moment," jager said. The USA and france, with their widely ramified pasteurizing institute, are currently much further ahead.