Environmental Health Center

Even when air pollutant concentrations decrease, the health risks posed by these pollutants can remain consistently high. This is the conclusion of an international study recently conducted under the leadership of researchers from Helmholtz Munich. A…

Dr. Lena Cords, a researcher at Helmholtz Munich, has been awarded the German Study Prize by the Körber Foundation in the category of natural and technical sciences for her doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. The prize is…

How researchers from Helmholtz Munich are making wheat, oats, barley, and co. fit for the future.

Knowledge bites about the impact of high-salt diet on allergic asthma and the driving force of these new insights on personalized medicin. Learn about the latest findings in an interview with Prof. Francesca Alessandrini.

The research results…

Environmental scientists in Augsburg from IEM / Helmholtz Munich and the University Hospital Augsburg are now using a cutting-edge measuring device capable of detecting complex aerosols, among them for example very small pollen, or other particles.…

Helmholtz Munich is researching how heat and cold affect people with chronic diseases as part of the Augsburg KORA Study.

The rise in asthma has been linked to different environmental and lifestyle factors including dietary habits. Researchers at Helmholtz Munich now discovered that a higher salt intake contributes to allergic asthma incidence in females. The team…

Interview with Prof. Annette Peters about how to protect yourself better against heat.

Interview with Prof. Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann about healthcare and resilience to heat and other effects of climate change.

Institute of Epidemiology carries out a range of projects on heat and health

A new research initiative, spearheaded by Prof. Michael Schloter in collaboration with Dr. Laura Wengenroth from the LMU Hospital Munich, is dedicated to exploring how the rural environment provides long-term protection against asthma and allergies.…

A mystery that has puzzled the scientific community for over 50 years has finally been solved. A team from Helmholtz Munich and Linköping University, Sweden, has discovered that a certain type of chemical reaction can explain why organic matter found…

Interview with Prof. Önder Yildirim about nutrition and COPD.

Scientists have reached a milestone in the research of childhood asthma. For the first time, they have clarified how a certain genetic defect in children initially leads to frequent infections and later to asthma. The study, published in the American…

An interview with Prof. Markus Diefenbacher, new Principal Investigator (PI) at the Helmholtz Munich Institute for Lung Health and Immunity

Prof. Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann explains how climate change affects our health. The environmental medicine specialist focuses on the prevention of allergic diseases such as hay fever and neurodermatitis.

Janine Gote-Schniering and Niklas Lang (LHI) described the cellular changes in the early stages of pulmonary fibrosis.

EU Project PerForM-REACT Strengthens Pandemic Preparedness Efforts

On March 11, 2024, the inauguration of the expanded safety laboratory in Augsburg marked a milestone within the EU-funded "PerForM-REACT" project, aimed at enhancing pandemic…

Various tissue fibroblast types with distinct properties shape the architecture of the specialized niches of the lung (e.g. airways, alveoli, vasculature). In a significant breakthrough, a team led by Gerald Burgstaller and Herbert Schiller from…

Munich site of German Center for Lung Research (DZL): Ali Önder Yildirim is following Erika von Mutius

How do ageing and environmental stress promote chronic inflammatory diseases? Maja Funk, new PI at the Institute of Lung Health and Immunity (LHI) at Helmholtz Munich is getting to the bottom of this question. Together with her team, she investigates…

Many cancer patients develop severe dermatitis during radiotherapy. Which factors increase the risk of such radiodermatitis has only been partially understood up until now. A pilot study at the University of Augsburg, Helmholtz Munich, and the…

A collaborative research project between scientists from Helmholtz Munich, Goethe University Frankfurt, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, and Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, on “Understanding and Targeting…

To mechanistically understand the root causes of lung disease, and identify drugs that target specific pathways, the scientists around Prof. Herbert Schiller and Dr. Gerald Burgstaller from Helmholtz Munich are collecting deep molecular insights from…

Redefining a Global Problem and an Urgent Need to Decipher the Disease’s Multiple Sub-Types

We urgently need more exchange about our findings from COPD research and clinical practice. But we need to broaden our perspective on the disease just as…

The consequences of climate change are far-reaching and profound. Extreme weather events, such as heat waves and droughts pose a severe threat to human lives and health.

The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) promises insights into ourselves, unraveling our cellular landscape.

Helmholtz Munich researchers have discovered, that air pollutants activate previously dormant herpes viruses leading to a immune response. These new findings are now published in ASC Nano.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was in 2019 the primary cause of deaths from chronic respiratory diseases, accounting for 3.3 million deaths worldwide. In Germany, according to the “European Lung White Book”, the number of COPD patients…

Our health and the environment around us are profoundly intertwined. But how do air pollution and other environmental factors interact with each other and determine our health for each individual and the neighborhood? Furthermore, how can artificial…

Ensuring the sustainability of oat cultivation as a significant future food source holds great promises for both human health and the climate. Dr. Nadia Kamal, a researcher at the Plant Genome and Systems Biology Group at Helmholtz Munich, has been…

Johannes Wenner Research Prize for Dr. Nicole Maison (IAP, Helmholtz Munich)

Lung research at Helmholtz Munich has made some spectacular breakthroughs. They could pave the way for the therapy of serious diseases.

Prof. von Mutius is one of nine exceptional individuals who have been awarded the "Bavarian Nobel Prize" this year for their outstanding work in the fields of science and art.

The foundations for resistant varieties are being developed through genome-assisted breeding and decoding of the complex hop genome as part of the new research project PANHOP at Helmholtz Munich. These varieties should counteract the effects of…

In January 2023, Helmholtz Imaging called for the Best Scientific Image for the third consecutive time. The winners were announced during the award ceremony on June 15, 2023, at the 3rd Annual Helmholtz Imaging Conference 2023. Lin Yang from the…

A new study conducted by Helmholtz Munich researchers reveals that ultrafine particles, representing the smallest size fraction of particulate air pollution, might be more dangerous to human health than larger particles. These findings add to the…

From 2023 to 2027, nanoPASS will unite research labs, technology and industrial companies to achieve an ambitious goal: to close the knowledge gaps in nanosafety testing.

During the Corona pandemic, experts from Helmholtz Munich helped to bring the situation under control as quickly as possible. Now they are preparing for the possibility of another pandemic: with new high-tech equipment and closely interlinked…

Loitering lung cells and cell death in COPD, female researchers with hijab, and the podcast host's concern after 20 years of cigarette use: the new episode of "Resonator" is an extraordinary conversation about Aicha Jeridi's research at the Institute…

ISEE2026 is coming to Munich!

COPD or pulmonary fibrosis - many chronic lung diseases develop in old age or worsen drastically in the later years of life. Which processes, which molecular processes play a role here? Prof. Dr. Mareike Lehmann, since 2020 group leader at the…

Klaus Mayer (Director Research Unit Plant Genome and Systems Biology, PGSB) and Michael Schloter (Director Research Unit for Comparative Microbiome Analysis, COMI) are among the 7,000 scientists most cited in 2022. That's according the new list from…

Rising temperatures accelerate processes: The simple rule of thumb taught in chemistry classes and known as reaction velocity-temperature-regulation, also applies in a broader sense to the effects of global warming on risk groups and sensitive…

New Publication of Ali Doryab and Otmar Schmid (Schmid Lab, Institute of Lung Health and Immunity) in Advanced Materials

Publication of Ali Doryab and Otmar Schmid (Schmid Lab, LHI) in Advanced Materials

On days with high temperatures, people taking certain medications have an increased risk of heart attack: this was found by a team of researchers led by Alexandra Schneider, PhD, research group leader 'Environmental Risks' at the Helmholtz Munich…

How can we predict the distribution of inhaled medical substances on the human body? And how can we do so with alternative methods without animal testing?

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding research of new treatment strategies for preventing tissue ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) as part of the FERROPath consortium. Starting in July 2022, the consortium receives…

Erika von Mutius, Director of the Environmental Health Center, and her team receive an Advanced ERC Grant for their research on prevention strategies to curb asthma and allergies in children. ERC Advanced Grants are endowed with up to 2.5 million…

Many children suffer from asthma or allergies. Early and effective prevention of these diseases is the declared goal of science. Which research strategies do scientists pursue and what part does cow barn play in this story?

Researchers have succeeded in sequencing and characterizing the entire genome of oat. Compared to other cereals and humans, the oat genome architecture is very complex. Scientists from Helmholtz Munich, Lund University and the ScanOats network…

By the use of fetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), scientists and physicians from Helmholtz Munich and LMU University Hospital Munich have discovered a reduction in lung volume in fetuses from mothers with an uncomplicated SARS-CoV-2 infection…

The interplay of genetics and epigenetics is a long-sought riddle in the development of diseases. Researchers from Helmholtz Munich and the Imperial College London discovered novel interactions. Their findings improve our knowledge about…