Leipzig University receives new research building for medical drug development

The new building is to be constructed on the site of Leipzig University Medicine and will be financed from European structural change funds and state funds totalling 50 million euros. The research and transfer hub can be used to generate new applications and thus also added value in the region in collaboration with institutions and companies in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

„I am extremely pleased that our Leipzig University Medical Centre as a location for cutting-edge medical research is being expanded to include a new building for research and transfer. My thanks go to all those involved in the Free State of Saxony and at European level who have initiated and supported this project," says Rector Prof Dr Eva Inés Obergfell. Good infrastructures are essential for cutting-edge research. They increase the attractiveness of Leipzig University and are therefore also a decisive quality feature for international researchers to decide in favour of the city of Leipzig.

In the future, a „research and transfer hub for drug development“ is to be established at the medical campus, where active ingredients for new modalities - proteins, antibodies, vaccines, peptides, cell therapies - will be developed in conjunction with traditional drug production. Money from the "Just Transition Fund", a new EU funding instrument, is available for the new 4,370 square metre research building. This serves to support the structural change from the lignite phase-out to a climate-neutral economy.

The Institute for Drug Development was founded at the Faculty of Medicine in January 2020 as part of the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. Humboldt Professor Dr Jens Meiler is the director of the institute and aims to combine basic research and clinical application in the field of new active substances in medicine. To this end, he uses computer and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted methods in combination with experimental laboratory analyses.

„Since the coronavirus pandemic, the computer-aided development of medical agents has become indispensable. The pandemic has greatly accelerated the process in the field of vaccine development," says Prof Meiler. Only recently, the institute received funding of 1.77 million euros for the development of a digital vaccine library. Vaccines, but also anti-cancer drugs, have to reach the human body and their site of action," says Meiler. This is why another current research project is focussing on transport substances (funding of around 1.5 million euros), without which RNA drugs would not work. These „cell transporters“ determine the shelf life of the RNA and, after administration, ensure transport in the body and targeted uptake into specific cells. They are crucial for the duration and site of action of mRNA-based therapeutics. The project is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology as part of the Consortium for Innovation in Science and Industry (KIWI) to improve production capacities in collaboration with BioNTech.

In the medium term, around 260 employees are to work in the „Research and Transfer Hub for Drug Development“ that is to be created. Planning has already begun in a co-operative process with the state-owned company Sächsisches Immobilien- und Baumanagement. The draft of an urban planning study with comparisons of variants has been available since this week in order to do justice to the demanding conditions with regard to site clearance, media supply and the specific location of the building on the future construction site.

Press release of the "Universitätsklinikum Leipzig" of 22 June 2023