Herrmann Lab

According to the WHO at the end of 2022, over 39 million people are currently living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Untreated people living with HIV (PLHIV) develop the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which leads to the destruction of the immune system and ultimately to death. The gold standard for anti-HIV treatment is the combined anti-retroviral therapy (cART). While cART can reduce virus levels in the blood beneath the detection limit, cART does not cure virus infection and does not prevent emergence of resistant viruses. Therefore, we believe it is of vital importance to continue filling the anti-HIV drug pipeline with potent, novel substances.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which have been the greatest health and economic crisis of our time, exposed the weaknesses of global health care systems and showed us the necessity to prepare for future pandemics. Due to the climate change among other factors, new pandemics are likely to happen in the future.

That is why we think that in addition to vaccines as a means of pandemic control, ‘first line’ broad-spectrum antiviral drugs are urgently needed to be developed to directly combat emerging viruses to bridge the time until first vaccines become available.

In traditional medicine herbs are often used to fight fevers or other illnesses. We want to use such herbal medicines as a starting point in our search for novel natural antivirals against different types of viruses from HIV to Dengue and Measles virus and scientifically tackle the reasons for their antiviral properties to discover their mechanisms of action.