Research

A research team led by Dr. med. Moritz Leppkes of FAU has discovered that in Covid-19 infections certain white blood cells, the neutrophilic granulocytes, are activated particularly aggressively, and then agglomerate and form nets known as neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in the blood vessels of the lungs.

On August 1, Kristian Franze will become one of the directors of the Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin (MPZPM) - at the same time he will become director of the Institute for Medical Physics and Microtissue Engineering at the FAU. In an interview, Kristian Franze explains what he is planning to do in Erlangen, where the focus of his work will be in the future - and why he is looking forward to a culture shock.

The EU is supporting the economy with enormous sums of money: politically well-connected companies with former EU Commissioners in their ranks could exploit the crisis to their advantage. A research team from FAU and the University of Lucerne has examined how the financial market reacts to the recruitment of former members of the European Commission and has shown that such fears are justified.

The new research training group ‘FAIR – Fine-tuning of the adaptive immune response’ at FAU aims to help better understand the molecular regulatory mechanisms of immune response.

The research project ‘Harmonisation of the Development of Complex Smart Product-Service Systems for SMEs’ (SmartHaPSSS) is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with around 2 million euros.

How does the immune system manage to fight invasive pathogens without damaging the body? And why does it sometimes turn against the body after all? A team from the Chair of Genetics at FAU has been exploring these questions together with the university hospitals in Erlangen and Regensburg.

Several studies conducted by the team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Mario Zaiss, Professorship of Immune Tolerance and Autoimmunity, suggest that a high-fibre diet can help to treat arthritis and even prevent the autoimmune disease to a certain extent.

Researchers from FAU, the University of Bristol and the University of Nottingham (UK) have developed a new procedure which allows fat residues to be analysed better than ever before in vessels that are thousands of years old. Mass spectrometry imaging can be used to determine the distribution and concentration of lipids, without having to destroy the ceramics in the process.

At the current time, almost 80 million people throughout the world are fleeing violence, catastrophes, conflicts, wars and persecution. For several years now, refugees and migration have been one of the major topics of our times. Many of the questions raised are now being dealt with in a collaborative project on migration and refugee research launched at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN) at FAU.

The wave of forced migration in 2015 and 2016 has changed integration politics in towns, administrative districts and municipalities in Germany forever. As a consequence, local integration management has been set up in several municipalities or existing structures have been expanded. At the same time, funding for integration policy measures is often not secure.