Full Scholarship Available for our Hepatitis E Course in Tübingen

Full Scholarship Available for our Hepatitis E Course in Tübingen

One FULL SCHOLARSHIP (includes flights+accommodation) available for a student/technician from a GLACIER partner country.

The course has already started and will go on for 1.5 months.

The student/technician should be interested in virology and diagnostics of HEV and have flexibility to travel to Germany in short notice.

The course is structured in two parts:

  1. Molecular and serological diagnostics in different samples and tissues.
  2. Data analyses and phylogeny.

For more information please send an email to: unamglacier@iecologia.unam.mx or GLACIER@ipb-halle.de

We look forward to hearing from you!

New Paper!

New Paper!

Natural product reisolation is a bottleneck when discovering new bioactive chemical entities from nature. To overcome this issue, multi-informative approaches integrating several layers of data have been applied with promising results. In this study, integration of taxonomy, nontargeted metabolomics, and bioactivity information resulted in the selection of Scytalidium sp. IQ-074 and Diaporthe sp. IQ-053 to isolate new natural products active against hPTP1B1–400 and repurpose others as antibiotics. Strain IQ-074 was selected based on the hypothesis that investigating poorly studied and highly metabolic taxa could lead to the isolation of new chemical entities. A chemical investigation of IQ-074 resulted in the isolation of papyracillic acid A (14), 7-deoxypapyracillic acid A (15a and 15b), and linear polyketides scytalpolyols A–D (16–19). Compound 17 inhibited hPTP1B1–400 with a half-maximal inhibitory concentration of 27.0 ± 1.7 μM. Diaporthe sp. IQ-053 was selected based on its antibacterial properties against pathogenic strains. Its chemical investigation yielded dothiorelones A (20) and I (21), cytosporones B (22) and C (23), pestalotiopsone B (24), and diaporthalasin (25). Compounds 22 and 25 inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis 42R and moderately inhibited the growth of Acinetobacter baumannii A564, a pandrug-resistant bacterium.

GLACIER PhD Student Successfully Defends Her Dissertation

GLACIER PhD Student Successfully Defends Her Dissertation

PhD Ingrid Yadira Martínez Aldino. © GLACIER

GLACIER PhD student Ingrid Yadira Martínez Aldino has successfully defended her dissertation “Chemical-biological study of ascomycetes for the discovery of allosteric modulators of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (hPTP1B 1-400) and inhibitors of pathogenic bacterial growth.”

Ingrid Yadira Martínez Aldino defends her PhD dissertation. © GLACIER

She carried out her research under the supervision of PhD José Alberto Rivera Chávez, member of the GLACIER consortium through the Institute of Chemistry of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

PhD Ingrid Yadira Martínez Aldino and her supervisor, PhD José Alberto Rivera Chávez. © GLACIER

You can read the paper “Absolute configuration and protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B inhibitory activity of xanthoepocin, a dimeric naphtopyrone from Penicillium sp. IQ-429” product of Martínez’s research here:

WHS PhD Retreat in Berlin

WHS PhD Retreat in Berlin

© GLACIER

GLACIER, together with the other three DAAD Global Health Centres, carried out a PhD retreat in Berlin that included a poster presentation session at the World Health Summit 2023.

Our grantees had the unique opportunity to present their work and their consortia to stakeholders and policymakers during the conference.

Mexico Real Lab Inauguration

Mexico Real Lab Inauguration

© GLACIER

On 28 July 2023 the new facilities where the GLACIER Mexico Real Lab will be housed were officially inaugurated in Mérida, Yucatán (Mexico). This research unit will welcome national and international mobility researchers and postgraduate students.

The new facilities have been conceived to promote collaborative work around major challenges in sustainability, including emergent infectious diseases with a one health approach. Facilities include computational and laboratory equipment. Funding for the building was from UNAM and equipment was acquired through different national and international sources, including CONACyT and DAAD (through GLACIER). National and international researchers, students (of different levels), postdoctoral researchers and scholars will benefit from the use of such facilities and the interactions and collaborations that they will prompt.

The German Ambassador visits our GLACIER Lab in Cuba

The German Ambassador visits our GLACIER Lab in Cuba

© GLACIER / Photo: Daniel García

Last week there was an official visit of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany in the Republic of Cuba, Frau Heidrun Tempel, to the GLACIER Lab at the University of Havana.

© Deutscher Ethikrat / Photo: Christian Tiel

The aim of the visit was to know first hand the research and training activities made in the GLACIER Center at the University of Havana and to offer support from the embassy for the cooperation activities between Cuba and Germany.

© GLACIER / Photo: Daniel García

The ambassador was hosted by Professor Julieta Coro Bermello, who is the deputy coordinator of the GLACIER center in Havana.