October 31, 2023: project granted: “Cell wall modifications catalysed by chitin deacetylases and their influence on the human immune response to Cryptococcus neoformans and other human pathogenic fungi”

Today, after about two years, our joint project with Dr. Christian Gorzelanny from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf was granted by the German Research Foundation, DFG. We are aiming to understand the role of cell wall chitins and chitosans in the pathogenicity of human pathogenic fungi, and in the triggering or avoidance of immune responses. Initially, Prof. Alex Weber from the University of Tübingen had been a third partner in this project. But our project had been too complex (and not well enough structured) to fully convince the DFG reviewers. We then decided that we would better split our project into two, Alex pursuing one part, Christian and we the other one, in both cases of course still in collaboration between all three groups. This had been a good decision: our greatly improved project was now granted by DFG. It largely builds on the doctoral project of Margareta Hellmann – she also is the main architect who designed the new project! She already collaborates with the teams of Christian and Alex, and with those of Prof. Jennifer Lodge from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Dr. Charles Specht from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The US colleagues are the world's leading experts in the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans. This fungus contains chitosans rather than chitins in its cell walls, possibly to evade the chitin-triggered human immune system. This is in analogy to some plant pathogenic fungi, for which we had found early that they convert chitin into chitosan when penetrating their hosts' tissue. Together with Christian, we will now find out how on a molecular and cellular basis, this works for human pathogenic fungi, including C. neoformans. And we agree with the DFG reviewers: the results will pave the way for follow-up projects to use this new knowledge for the development of medical applications in disease prevention and therapy.