LOEWE funding for unconventional research: mode of action of fluoropyrimidines

Funding line 5 "LOEWE-Exploration" is intended to implement novel, innovative and daring research ideas that challenge or substantially expand current scientific understanding in a field. Dr. Klassen's research project, which is supported by these funds, focuses on a new target of drugs from the fluoropyrimidine group against cancer and life-threatening fungal infections. Thus, the project is located at the interface of basic research and medical application.

Fluoropyrimidines are already used as standard in the treatment of systemic fungal infections and tumor diseases, as they inhibit the formation of new DNA in these cells and thus cell growth. Dr. Klassen and his team hypothesize that fluoropyrimidines also attack other macromolecules in fungal and tumor cells. They want to test this hypothesis in the LOEWE research project. This new target could be the so-called transfer RNA, which plays a role in the formation of proteins. The scientists suspect that fluoropyrimidines prevent a certain step in the production of this transfer RNA. Without it, cells cannot make proteins and die. "If we can prove that fluoropyrimidines degrade transfer RNA and also find out how they do so, then new and more specific active agents against tumors and systemic fungal diseases could be developed on this basis," explains Dr. Klassen.

The "LOEWE-Exploration" research funding program

The research project is funded by the LOEWE-Exploration research funding program with project funds amounting to approximately 236,052 euros with a duration of two years. A total of 12 projects of Hessian universities were selected in this new funding line, which will be funded with project funds totaling a good three million euros for the duration of two years. This was decided by the LOEW Administrative Commission based on the recommendation of the LOEWE Program Advisory Board. "Science must take risks and also be allowed to fail from time to time in order to generate innovation. That's why, with our LOEWE-Exploration funding line, we give researchers the freedom to pursue novel, highly innovative research ideas," explains Science Minister Angela Dorn. "With between 200,000 to 300,000 euros each for two years, they can test an unconventional hypothesis, a radically new approach. Such freedom has become rare in research funding. Yet research needs this kind of courage in order to find groundbreaking new approaches. In this way, we are also closing a funding gap in the German science system that the German Science Council recently criticized. It is no coincidence, for example, that the technology for zero-emission cars was developed to market maturity in other countries, to the detriment of the German auto industry: We need more courageous science."

The State Offensive for the Development of Scientific and Economic Excellence - LOEWE for short - is the title of the research funding program with which the state of Hesse has been aiming to provide science policy impetus since 2008 and thus strengthen the Hessian research landscape in the long term.  Since then, LOEWE has been funding outstanding research projects, highly innovative research ideas and excellent scientists in what are now five funding lines.

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