Latest News

Germany to pump €1bn into breakthrough innovation

German Research Minister Anja Karliczek and Economics Minister Peter Altmaier make a joint statement on the founding of the Agency for Jump Innovations following the meeting of the Federal Cabinet. © BMBF / Hans-Joachim Rickel


by tg

Germany’s government announced that it will create an agency for breakthrough ("jump") innovation to foster technology transfer of risky research projects with high market potential into products.

The German agency precede EU plans to create a similar EU agency within its next research framework programme starting in 2021. The agency will be funded with roughly €1bn over 10 years.

The move is intented to keep value creation in Germany.  The idea for such an agency is lent from the US agency DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which was founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950ies to support commercialisation of groundbreaking inventions such as the Internet, GPS or driverless vehicles. Besides Germany, Sweden and Switzerland have already established innovation agencies for non-military purposes. 

The German agency is set to start next year. According to Germany’s minister for economics, Peter Altmaier, a first call will seek for 3 to 4 promising artificial intelligence projects.

Making opoids more effective pain killers

The m-opioid receptor (MOR) is an important target for pain management and can be activated by natural opioids, like morphine, and synthetic opioids,...

AMR: IMI’s Enable project reaches endpoints

The IMI project was recently granted a one-year extension to promote further progression of ongoing programmes, while keeping within the original...

GE renamed Cytiva upon take-over by Danaher

The acquisition of GE Healthcare Life Sciences by Danaher Corporation creates a giant in contract manufacturing and development. While GE Healthcare...

Nutrition influences the course of MS

In Cell the team headed by Aiden Haghikia from University Bochum demonstrated that the administration of propionic acid (PA) in addition to MS...

Diabetes combo improves regeneration of beta cells

The new strategy published in Science Translational Medicine  “offers a scalable and rapid approach to overcome the current obstacles in the...

Nestlé heavily invests in sustainable packaging

According to the announcement and building on its 2018 commitment to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025, Swiss food giant...

UK researchers present dengue virus transmission map

The map of variation in dengue transmission intensity rather than current maps of endemicity offers clues about the most effective types of...