The COVID 19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of emerging infectious diseases. The epidemic or even pandemic spread of previously unknown viruses is not a new phenomenon, though, as demonstrated by infectious diseases such as influenza, AIDS, Ebola fever, and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) caused by SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses.

Also of rapidly increasing importance in infection research is the global rise of antibiotic resistance. Dubbed the "silent pandemic," antibiotic multidrug resistance resulting from overuse of antibiotics is now ubiquitous, causing conventional antibiotics to increasingly lose their effectiveness. The treatment of chronic bacterial infectious diseases such as tuberculosis is as much at risk from the lack of effective antibiotics as hospital-acquired infections with bacterial pathogens, most prominently methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains and beta-lactamase-producing enterobacteria. The latter pose a particular threat to immunocompromised patients, whose numbers are steadily increasing in our ageing society.

Also of global importance are diseases caused by parasites, such as malaria, and neglected tropical diseases, which pose enormous health risks to hundreds of millions of people. In the fight against this multitude of viral, bacterial and parasitic infectious agents, scientists at the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) are involved in screening new active compounds and developing diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic procedures.