Christa Schleper

The goal of the ArcHealth "Archaea for Human Health" research project is to develop a fundamentally new product derived from archaea that has the potential to revolutionize current standards of treatment for human health. Archaea are tiny single-celled organisms and, together with bacteria, form the group of prokaryotes and, together with eukaryotes, one of the three "domains of life". A major advantage of relying on archaea – instead of bacteria – for therapeutics is their high robustness, as they defy all environmental conditions and their fluctuations. At the same time, they have a low nutrient requirement and there is currently not a single known pathogenic representative. The ideas for this ERC Proof of Concept Grant of Christa Schleper emerged from research carried out within the framework of her ERC Advanced Grant TACKLE.