Greener NHS - 18/11/2024

National Health Service working towards climate neutrality

The National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is taking steps to become more environmentally sustainable. The NHS has committed to the ambitious goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040, aiming to significantly reduce its climate impact in the coming years.

PURA syndrome is a rare developmental disorder of the brain for which there is currently no cure. The patient association PURA Syndrome Germany was founded last year. Since then, the affected families have been collecting donations with great dedication – and have decided to donate the majority of this money to research into the syndrome at Ulm University.

NMI project WOUNDSENS - 23/10/2024

Wound monitoring using sensory nanofibres

Monitoring the condition of chronic, non-healing wounds requires wound dressings to be changed at short, regular intervals. In the EU-funded WOUNDSENS project, researchers at the NMI in Reutlingen are using electrospinning to produce novel types of wound dressings. These consist of biosensory fibres that send information about the condition of the wound to the outside, thereby improving inflammation detection.

Sustainable medical technology - 10/10/2024

Rethinking plastics in medical technology

Good healthcare relies heavily on medical products made from plastic. However, the widespread use of synthetic materials, particularly disposable items, creates vast amounts of waste, depletes resources and leads to a substantial carbon footprint. To create more environmentally friendly plastic products in the future, substantial changes to production processes are essential.

Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), together with doctors from the Urological Clinic of the Mannheim University Hospital, have developed and successfully tested a chatbot based on artificial intelligence. "UroBot" was able to answer questions from the urology specialist examination with a high degree of accuracy, surpassing both other language models and the accuracy of experienced urologists.

BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg publishes first results of a new WifOR study - 11/09/2024

Industrial healthcare industry in Baden-Württemberg: gross value added of more than 19 billion euros

The industrial healthcare sector (iGW) plays a central role in the economy in Baden-Württemberg. In 2021, the sector generated a direct gross value added of 19.6 billion euros, which corresponds to around a third (32.6%) of the entire regional healthcare industry. Of 96.3%, almost all of the healthcare sectors's exports in the state in 2021 came from the iGW. These are the findings of a new study conducted on behalf of BIOPRO…

With mice, researchers showed that experimentally induced lack of blood flow in the brain epigenetically reprograms astrocytes into brain stem cells, which in turn can give rise to nerve progenitor cells. This discovery shows that astrocytes could potentially be used in regenerative medicine to replace damaged nerve cells.

Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have developed a completely new vaccination concept. The vaccine is inexpensive and protects mice against almost all cancer-causing HPV types. In addition to preventing new infections, the vaccine also triggers cellular immune responses against HPV-infected cells and may therefore also have a therapeutic effect against existing infections.

Start-up Cerebri GmbH - 05/08/2024

Comprehensive EEG supply thanks to telemedicine

Fewer and fewer patients are getting timely access to electroencephalograms, as the process of measuring brain activity and interpreting the results requires specific expertise. Cerebri GmbH, a newly established Tübingen-based company, aims to address this issue by offering user-friendly EEG caps and providing rapid, location-independent and top-tier diagnostics by experts.

Research association - 24/07/2024

SPI-MP: pioneer in personalised medical technology

Every person is unique – even when they are ill. This is why many approaches to personalised medicine have been under development. The Stuttgart Partnership Initiative - Mass Personalization (SPI-MP), which focuses on basic research into fabrication and biomaterial technologies for personalised biomedical systems, is at the heart of such research work. The projects range from artificial knee joint cartilage to state-of-the-art stroke diagnostics.

BioRegio STERN Management GmbH is a partner in the new RehAllianCE project, which is being funded by the EU as part of the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE program. The focus is on the use of new technologies in rehabilitation to improve patient care. The aim is to increase the innovation capacities of SMEs so that aids such as rehabilitation robots, exoskeletons etc. can be used more quickly.

How can we use artificial intelligence (AI) to make comprehensible medical decisions? A new project at the University of Mannheim, which has received funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), will analyze this question.

he Robert Bosch Stiftung is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2024. To commemorate this, the Foundation is holding an anniversary celebration today at its headquarters in Stuttgart. Among the guests are partners from the Foundation's charitable work as well as representatives from politics, business, and society, including members of the Bosch family and company.

Since 2019, the Research Training Group (RTG) "Intraoperative Multisensoric Tissue Differentiation in Oncology," a collaboration between the University of Stuttgart and the University of Tübingen, has been advancing research in medical technology. With the help of new sensor methods, the researchers want to help make surgical procedures on cancer patients safer and more effective.

The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Arts (MWK) is supporting medical researchers at Ulm University with start-up funding totalling 600,000 euros. The aim is to establish an EU consortium for the broad therapeutic use of mesenchymal stromal cells. The funding is being awarded as part of the "BEGIN - Participation in major European projects and initiatives" programme.

Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the European Bioinformatics Institute EMBL-EBI, Hinxton, UK, are using the Danish health registers to predict individual risks for 20 different types of cancer with a high degree of accuracy. The prediction model can also be transferred to other healthcare systems.

On May 17, 2024, aesco solutions, a leading group for production and development services (CDMO) for medical device companies, and D11Z. Ventures GmbH & Co. KG (formerly Zukunftsfonds Heilbronn) announce the closing of the acquisition of seleon GmbH.

Colorectal cancer differs from patient to patient. That is why scientists are looking for characteristic tumors markers that allow to make predictions about the likely response to certain therapies and the individual prognosis. The aim is to identify colorectal cancer subtypes so that these can then be treated in a customized manner.

How do tumors react to a certain therapeutic approach? Knowing this before the start of a therapy would be of enormous value for people suffering from cancer as well as for the doctors treating them. Researchers have now made this very observation possible for the CAR-T cell therapy. This allows us to individually investigate how exactly these tumor cells react to the planned therapy.

Professor Claudia Denkinger from Heidelberg University's Faculty of Medicine is leading the international collaborative project "BreathForDiagnosis". Researchers from Germany, Italy, South Africa and Romania are working with an industrial partner from Switzerland to develop user-friendly breath tests for the rapid diagnosis of respiratory infections such as tuberculosis.

Fatty liver disease often leads to chronic liver inflammation and can even result in liver cancer. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University of Tuebingen have now shown in mice that intermittent fasting can halt this development.

Computer scientists from the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behaviour developed a model, that explains how collective scenarios such as diseases may proceed.

Health Data Futures project - 11/01/2024

Creating a network of trust

In the three-nation project "Health Data Futures", stakeholders and experts from Germany, France and Switzerland have launched a series of patient-centred innovations. Using various future scenarios, the project partners may be able to come up with even more scenarios.

The German Cancer Society has certified the Center for Personalized Medicine (ZPM) at Heidelberg University Hospital. At the ZPM Heidelberg, patients with advanced and rare cancers and, in future, people with severe chronic inflammatory diseases will receive a molecular genetic analysis. The detailed information can open up new treatment options for those affected.