When the new building housing the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) was opened in Giessen in the autumn of 2020, the site director and spokesperson for the LOEWE Centre for Insect Biotechnology and Biodiversity Research (ZIB), Prof. Andreas Vilcinskas, talked about a “temple” of research. Two high-security, biosafety level 3 laboratories, which are also designed for use by research scientists in the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (TBG), among others, are being established here in order to develop a new medicine from the research work on viruses.

Professor Dr Kornelia Hardes, a scientist involved in LOEWE TBG, and her team are conducting research to identify lead structures in order to treat influenza infections, for example. She has now received funding for this amounting to EUR 3.2 million. As a result, work is also due to take place on bird flu viruses in the high-security laboratories at the Fraunhofer Institute IME. “The long-term goal of her research work is to develop medication to treat flu infections,” Hardes said in the Giessener Allgemeine newspaper on 30 March 2021.