SynThera – Synthetic, therapeutic microbes for targeted antimicrobial therapy

More and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. As a result, infections are becoming increasingly difficult to treat – a development that poses major challenges for modern medicine. New ways of effectively combating dangerous pathogens are therefore urgently needed.

This is precisely where the SynThera research project comes in. The aim is to use synthetic biology to develop beneficial microorganisms that can recognise and combat disease-causing, antibiotic-resistant bacteria directly at the site of infection. At the same time, existing preventive treatment strategies are to be improved and tailored more closely to individual patients.

SynThera thus has the potential to fundamentally transform the treatment of bacterial infections and open up new possibilities in the fight against multi-drug-resistant pathogens. The project is funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation under the ‘Breakthroughs’ funding programme for a period of five years. A total of ten research groups from Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) are working together to develop these new therapeutic approaches.