Prof Achim Hoerauf

Prof Achim Hoerauf is the Director of the IMMIP and a leading expert in filariasis. His group discovered the Wolbachia-filaria endosymbiotic relationship and he performed the first doxycycline trials 20 years ago. Achim Hoerauf has repeatedly been a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Parasitic Diseases (Filarial Infections), is an advisor on onchocerciasis to the Carter Center Atlanta and the German Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF). He is the coordinator of the Bonn/Cologne site of the German Center for Infection Research (www.dzif.de) and is the current chairperson of the German Neglected Tropical Diseases network (www.dntds.de) that acts as a contact to the German government, advising the different ministries working to implement the Germany’s commitments to the London Declaration, G20 and UN Sustainable Development Goals. Achim Hoerauf has been collaborating with key African scientists on filariasis for more than 20 years, acting as PI on > 20 clinical trials funded by the BMBF, EU, the Volkswagen Foundation, and several grants from the Gates Foundation. He has been a member of the Gates Foundation Macrofilaricidal Development Accelerator (MacDA) program that has brought together scientific and pharmaceutical entities to develop new adulticidal drugs to treat filariasis. In addition, he has worked closely with several companies (Bayer, Abbvie, Cellgene) to develop new antihelminthics. Results of these and other projects have achieved 5 patents-pending and patents for new antimalarials and anthelminthics. Funded by the German Center of ID research (www.dzif.de), Prof. Hoerauf and his team have a new antibiotic in late preclinical development, Corallopyronin A, which is highly active against the Wolbachia endosymbionts in filarial worms, but also against multi-resistant Staph. aureus, Chlamydia and Gonococci.

Institute’s website:

https://www.microbiology-bonn.de/