Environmental Health Center, Helmholtz Munich

A conceptual image showing a lung-shaped lake in a lush and pristine jungle

The Environmental Health Center (EHC) is dedicated to combating diseases caused by environmental factors, such as allergies, asthma, and chronic lung diseases, with the primary goal of prevention. Where prevention is not possible, we aim to advance medicine and develop innovative treatments by understanding the underlying mechanisms and translating these into novel drugs.

The Environmental Health Center (EHC) is dedicated to combating diseases caused by environmental factors, such as allergies, asthma, and chronic lung diseases, with the primary goal on prevention. Where prevention is not possible, we aim to advance medicine and develop innovative treatments by understanding the underlying mechanisms and translating these into novel drugs.

A key strength of our research is the comprehensive interdisciplinary approach. Epidemiology identifies the relevant exposures for individual diseases. We then investigate the molecular basis of disease development and identify key mechanisms. Finally, we translate our findings into prevention and novel therapies.

Thermometer in front of a sky with sun and clouds

Climate and Health

Heat – When Temperature Impacts Health

Driven by climate change, heatwaves are becoming increasingly frequent and prolonged in Germany. Especially for older adults, children, and people with pre-existing conditions, extreme heat can pose a health risk.

Tired asian woman suffer from sunburn very hot in summer weather problem feel faint,dizzy,difficulty breathing,female teenage with heat stroke,high temperature,burning heat wave hot sun on sunny day

Climate and Health

One Health: Climate Change Triggers Common Diseases

Helmholtz Munich is targeting the four major common diseases known to be exacerbated by climate change: allergies, diabetes, and pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases.

New Hope regarding lung diseases

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

A little girl looks at a young cow in a field on a warm summer evening.

Asthma in children

The Farm Effect

Many children suffer from asthma or allergies. Yet these complaints could be combated as they arise. What strategies is research pursuing and what role does the cowshed play in this?

Staple Foods Defy Climate Change

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

Prof. Dr. Erika von Mutius

Director Institute of Asthma and Allergy Prevention

Prof. Dr. Annette Peters

Director Institute of Epidemiology

Prof. Dr. Önder Yildirim

Director Institute of Lung Health and Immunity

Prof. Dr. Herbert Schiller

Director Research Unit Precision Regenerative Medicine

Michael Hoelscher Portrait_unbearbeitet_freigestellt

Prof. Dr. Michael Hoelscher

Director Unit Global Health

Prof. Dr. Michael Schloter

Director Research Unit for Comparative Microbiome Analyses

Prof. Dr. Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin

Director Research Unit Analytical BioGeoChemistry

Prof. Dr. Klaus F.X. Mayer

Director Research Unit Plant Genome and Systems Biology

Porträt Jörg-Peter Schnitzler_freigestellt

Prof. Dr. Jörg-Peter Schnitzler

Director Research Unit Environmental Simulation

Porträt Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann_freigestellt

Prof. Dr. Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann

Director Institute of Environmental Medicine

Porträt Carsten Schmidt-Weber, freigestellt

Prof. Dr. Carsten Schmidt-Weber

Director Institute of Allergy Research

News

Environmental Health, IEM, July 16, 2025

A new expert opinion piece in the medical journal The Lancet highlights a growing alignment between scientific frameworks that examine how changes in the Earth system - such as biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change – are influencing human…

Events, Awards & Grants, Stem Cells, ISF, Environmental Health, LHI, Pioneer Campus, July 03, 2025

Outstanding achievements in early-career research and academic mentoring were celebrated at an award ceremony held on July 2 at Helmholtz Munich. Two Doctoral Researcher Awards and the Best Supervisor Award were presented – prestigious honors that…

A hexagonal grid of digital connections, representing the global network and data transfer in artificial intelligence. AdobeStock_1334177573

AI, New Research Findings, Environmental Health, LHI, Computational Health, ICB, July 01, 2025

Researchers from more than 50 international institutions have launched Open Problems (https://openproblems.bio) a collaborative open-source platform to benchmark, improve, and run competitions for computational methods in single-cell genomics. Co-led…

Syringe and vaccine bottle with the flag of the EU

Environmental Health, UGH, Molecular Targets and Therapeutics, VIRO, June 26, 2025

The European Commission has launched the European Vaccines Hub (EVH) for Pandemic Readiness, a new initiative aiming to accelerate the development of vaccines for future public health emergencies. Helmholtz Munich contributes its virology and global…

Featured Publication, Environmental Health, EPI, June 24, 2025

A new study conducted by researchers at Helmholtz Munich and collaborators reveals a significant association between long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution and impaired odor identification, a possible early indicator of neurodegenerative…

See all Publications

2025 Review in Nature Methods

Hrovatin, K. ; Sikkema, L. ; Shitov, V.A. ; Heimberg, G. ; Shulman, M. ; Oliver, A.J. ; Müller, M. ; Ibarra Del Rio, I.A. ; Wang, H. ; Ramirez Suastegui, C. ; He, P. ; Schaar, A. ; Teichmann, S.A. ; Theis, F.J. ; Luecken, M.

Considerations for building and using integrated single-cell atlases

2024 Scientific Article in BMJ

He, C. ; Breitner-Busch, S. ; Huber, V. ; […]; Schneider, A.E.

Rainfall events and daily mortality across 645 global locations: Two stage time series analysis

2024 Scientific Article in European Heart Journal

He, C. ; Breitner-Busch, S. ; Zhang, S. ; Huber, V. ; Naumann, M. ; Traidl-Hoffmann, C. ; Hammel, G. ; Peters, A. ; Ertl, M. ; Schneider, A.E.

Nocturnal heat exposure and stroke risk

2024 Scientific Article in NEJM Evidence

Wallis, R.S. ; Sabi, I. ; Lalashowi, J. ; Bakuli, A. ; Mapamba, D. ; Olomi, W. ; Siyame, E. ; Ngaraguza, B. ; Chimbe, O. ; Charalambous, S. ; Rachow, A. ; Ivanova, O. ; Zurba, L. ; Myombe, B. ; Kunambi, R. ; Hoelscher, M. ; Ntinginya, N.E. ; Churchyard, G.

Adjunctive N-acetylcysteine and lung function in pulmonary tuberculosis

2024 Scientific Article in Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med.

Jakwerth, C.A. ; Weckmann, M. ; Illi, S. ; Charles, H. ; Zissler, U.M. ; Oelsner, M. ; Guerth, F. ; Omony, J. ; Nemani, S.S.P. ; Grychtol, R. ; Dittrich, A.M. ; Skevaki, C. ; Foth, S. ; Weber, S. ; Alejandre Alcazar, M.A. ; van Koningsbruggen-Rietschel, S. ; Brock, R. ; Blau, S. ; Hansen, G. ; Bahmer, T. ; Rabe, K.F. ; Brinkmann, F. ; Kopp, M.V. ; Chaker, A.M. ; Schaub, B. ; Von Mutius, E. ; Schmidt-Weber, C.B.

17q21 variants disturb mucosal host defense in childhood asthma

2023 Scientific Article in Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med.

Schwarz, M. ; Schneider, A.E. ; Cyrys, J. ; Bastian, S. ; Breitner-Busch, S. ; Peters, A.

Impact of ambient ultrafine particles on cause-specific mortality in three German cities

2023 Scientific Article in Sci. Transl. Med.

Lang, N.J. ; Schniering, J. ; Porras-Gonzalez, D.L. ; Yang, L. ; De Sadeleer, L.J. ; Jentzsch, R.C. ; Shitov, V.A. ; Zhou, S. ; Ansari, M. ; Agami, A. ; Mayr, C. ; Hooshiar Kashani, B. ; Chen, Y. ; Heumos, L. ; Pestoni, J. ; Molnar, E.S. ; Geeraerts, E. ; Anquetil, V. ; Saniere, L. ; Wögrath, M. ; Gerckens, M. ; Lehmann, M. ; Yildirim, A.Ö. ; Hatz, R.A. ; Kneidinger, N. ; Behr, J. ; Wuyts, W.A. ; Stoleriu, M.-G. ; Luecken, M. ; Theis, F.J. ; Burgstaller, G. ; Schiller, H.

Ex vivo tissue perturbations coupled to single-cell RNA-seq reveal multilineage cell circuit dynamics in human lung fibrogenesis

2023 Scientific Article in Environ. Int.

Ni, W. ; Nikolaou, N. ; Ward-Caviness, C. ; Breitner-Busch, S. ; Wolf, K. ; Zhang, S. ; Wilson, R. ; Waldenberger, M. ; Peters, A. ; Schneider, A.E.

Associations between medium- and long-term exposure to air temperature and epigenetic age acceleration

2023 Scientific article in nature medicine

Sikkema, L. ; […] ; Schniering, J. ; […]; Kapellos, T. ; […]; Schiller, H. ; […]; Luecken, M. ; Theis, F.J.

An integrated cell atlas of the lung in health and disease

2022 Scientific article in nature

Kamal, N. ; Tsardakas Renhuldt, N. ; Bentzer, J. ; Gundlach, H. ; Haberer, G. ; Juhász, A. ; Lux, T. ; Bose, U. ; Tye-Din, J.A. ; Lang, D. ; van Gessel, N. ; Reski, R. ; Fu, Y.B. ; Spégel, P. ; Ceplitis, A. ; Himmelbach, A. ; Waters, A.J. ; Bekele, W.A. ; Colgrave, M.L. ; Hansson, M. ; Stein, N. ; Mayer, K.F.X. ; Jellen, E.N. ; Maughan, P.J. ; Tinker, N.A. ; Mascher, M. ; Olsson, O. ; Spannagl, M. ; Sirijovski, N.

The mosaic oat genome gives insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop

2022 Scientific article in nature methods

Luecken, M. ; Büttner, M. ; Chaichoompu, K. ; Danese, A. ; Interlandi, M. ; Müller, M. ; Strobl, D.C. ; Zappia, L. ; Dugas, M. ; Colomé-Tatché, M. ; Theis, F.J.

Benchmarking atlas-level data integration in single-cell genomics

2021 Scientific article in nature biotechnology

Lotfollahi, M. ; Naghipourfar, M. ; Luecken, M. ; Khajavi, M. ; Büttner, M. ; Wagenstetter, M. ; Avsec, Z. ; Gayoso, A. ; Yosef, N. ; Interlandi, M. ; Rybakov, S. ; Misharin, A.V. ; Theis, F.J.

Mapping single-cell data to reference atlases by transfer learning

2021 Scientific Article in Science Advances

Gerckens, M. ; Schorpp, K.K. ; Pelizza, F. ; Wögrath, M. ; Reichau, K. ; Ma, H. ; Dworsky, A.-M. ; Sengupta, A. ; Stoleriu, M.-G. ; Heinzelmann, K. ; Merl-Pham, J. ; Irmler, M. ; Alsafadi, H.N. ; Trenkenschuh, E. ; Sarnova, L. ; Jirouskova, M. ; Frieß, W. ; Hauck, S.M. ; Beckers, J. ; Kneidinger, N. ; Behr, J. ; Hilgendorff, A. ; Hadian, K. ; Lindner, M. ; Königshoff, M. ; Eickelberg, O. ; Gregor, M. ; Plettenburg, O. ; Yildirim, A.Ö. ; Burgstaller, G.

Phenotypic drug screening in a human fibrosis model identified a novel class of antifibrotic therapeutics

2021 Scientific Article in Lancet Planet Health

Zhang, S. ; Mwiberi, S. ; Pickford, R. ; Breitner-Busch, S. ; Huth, C. ; Koenig, W. ; Rathmann, W. ; Herder, C. ; Roden, M. ; Cyrys, J. ; Peters, A. ; Wolf, K. ; Schneider, A.E.

Longitudinal associations between ambient air pollution and insulin sensitivity: Results from the KORA cohort study

2021 Review in Cell

Peters, A. ; Nawrot, T.S. ; Baccarelli, A.A.

Hallmarks of environmental insults

2021 Scientific article in nature medicine

Muus, C. ; Luecken, M. ; […] ; Conlon, T.M. ; […] ; Ziegler, C.G.K.

Single-cell meta-analysis of SARS-CoV-2 entry genes across tissues and demographics

2020 nature

Conlon, T.M. ; John-Schuster, G. ; Heide, D. ; Pfister, D. ; Lehmann, M. ; Hu, Y. ; Ertüz, Z. ; López, M.A. ; Ansari, M. ; Strunz, M. ; Mayr, C. ; Ciminieri, C. ; Costa, R. ; Kohlhepp, M.S. ; Guillot, A. ; Güneş, G. ; Jeridi, A. ; Funk, M.C. ; Beroshvili, G. ; Prokosch, S. ; Hetzer, J. ; Verleden, S.E. ; Alsafadi, H.N. ; Lindner, M. ; Burgstaller, G. ; Becker, L. ; Irmler, M. ; Dudek, M. ; Janzen, J. ; Goffin, E. ; Gosens, R. ; Knolle, P. ; Pirotte, B. ; Stöger, T. ; Beckers, J. ; Wagner, D.E. ; Singh, I. ; Theis, F.J. ; Hrabě de Angelis, M. ; O’Connor, T. ; Tacke, F. ; Boutros, M. ; Dejardin, E. ; Eickelberg, O. ; Schiller, H. B. ; Königshoff, M. ; Heikenwalder, M. ; Yildirim, A.Ö.

Inhibition of LTβR signalling activates WNT-induced regeneration in lung

2020 Scientific article in nature genetics

Haberer, G. ; Kamal, N. ; Bauer, E. ; Gundlach, H. ; Fischer, I. ; Seidel, M. ; Spannagl, M. ; Marcon, C. ; Ruban, A. ; Urbany, C. ; Nemri, A. ; Hochholdinger, F. ; Ouzunova, M. ; Houben, A. ; Schön, C.C. ; Mayer, K.F.X.

European maize genomes highlight intraspecies variation in repeat and gene content

2020 Scientific article in nature

Jayakodi, M. ; Padmarasu, S. ; Haberer, G. ; Bonthala, V. ; Gundlach, H. ; Monat, C. ; Lux, T. ; Kamal, N. ; Lang, D. ; […]; Mayer, K.F.X. ; Spannagl, M. ; Li, C. ; Mascher, M. ; Stein, N.

The barley pan-genome reveals the hidden legacy of mutation breeding

2016 Scientific Article in N Engl J Med.

Stein, M.M. ; Hrusch, C.L. ; Gozdz, J. ; Igartua, C. ; Pivniouk, V. ; Murray, S.E. ; Ledford, J.G. ; Marques Dos Santos, M. ; Anderson, R.L. ; Metwali, N. ; Neilson, J.W. ; Maier, R.M. ; Gilbert, J.A. ; Holbreich, M. ; Thorne, P.S. ; Martinez, F.D. ; von Mutius, E. ; Vercelli, D. ; Ober, C. ; Sperling, A.I.

Innate Immunity and Asthma Risk in Amish and Hutterite Farm Children

Environmental Health Center

Research Highlights

Heat – When Temperature Impacts Health

One Health: Climate Change Triggers Common Diseases

New Hope regarding lung diseases

The Farm Effect

Staple Foods Defy Climate Change

Institutes

Research Unit of Molecular Epidemiology (AME)

Institute of Allergy Research (IAF)/ Center for Allergy & Environment (ZAUM)

Institute of Asthma and Allergy Prevention (IAP)

Institute of Environmental Medicine (IEM)

Institute of Lung Health and Immunity (LHI)

Institute of Epidemiology (EPI)

Research Unit Environmental Simulation (EUS)

Research Unit Plant Genome and Systems Biology (PGSB)

Research Unit Analytical BioGeoChemistry (BGC)

Research Unit for Comparative Microbiome Analyses (COMI)

Comprehensive Molecular Analytics Cooperation Group (CMA)

Research Unit for Precision Regenerative Medicine (PRM)

Unit Global Health (UGH)

News

Planetary Health and Planetary Boundaries: A Unified Scientific Perspective

Honoring Doctoral Researchers and Supervisors at Helmholtz Munich

Open Problems: Cracking Cell Complexity with Collective Intelligence

Helmholtz Munich Joins European Vaccines Hub for Pandemic Readiness

Long-Term Traffic-Related Air Pollution Exposure Linked to Impaired Sense of Smell

Selected Publications

Networks and Affiliations

The German National Cohort (NAKO)

The German Center for Lung Research (DZL)

LMU, Munich University

Technical University Munich

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

United States Environmental Protection Agency

Contact

Dr. Corinna Barz

Environmental Health and Lung Research School