A team of scientists led by Professor Karsten Hiller from the Braunschweig Centre for Systems Biology BRICS has discovered an endogenous, anti-inflammatory substance: mesaconic acid. This molecule could be a drug candidate that can be further developed to treat shock resulting from blood poisoning and autoimmune diseases such as psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) – without the known side effects of anti-inflammatory drugs currently in use.