Profile text CMFI
Funding
The CMFI is one of more than 50 Clusters of Excellence funded by German federal and state governments as part of the Excellence Strategy to sustainably strengthen Germany as a center of science, improve its international competitiveness and make cutting-edge research at German universities visible. In addition to the University of Tübingen, the Max Planck Institute for Biology and the University Hospital Tübingen are involved in the CMFI.
Goal
The Cluster of Excellence CMFI brings together researchers from different disciplines such as infection biology, immunology, bioinformatics, pharmaceutical biology, antibiotics research, molecular and medical microbiology, biotechnology, environmental biology, systems biology, chemistry, and medical history and ethics. Their common goal is to elucidate the mechanisms of interaction between beneficial and harmful bacteria and the host in order to develop novel targeted therapeutic and anti-infective treatments.
To do this, our scientists are studying the microbiome. Microbiomes are the communities of microbes that live on the surfaces of the human body. Bacteria make up the majority of the microbiome. There are different microbiomes on and in the human body, such as the microbiome of the skin, nose or gut. Along with bacteria which have a positive effect on human health, microbiomes contain potentially life-threatening pathogens. In the past, broad-spectrum antibiotics have often been used to tackle them. Nowadays it is known that this not only promotes resistance to antibiotics – in many cases it also damages the microbiome as a whole.