Frank Kirchhoff (virologist)

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Frank Kirchhoff (born April 24, 1961 in Bückeburg ) is a German virologist who deals with HIV (AIDS).

Life

Kirchhoff attended elementary school in Obernkirchen and grew up there. After graduating from high school Adolfinum Bückeburg in 1982 , he studied biology at the University of Göttingen , where he received his doctorate magna cum laude in 1991 at the German Primate Center on HIV-2 with Gerhard Hunsmann . As a post-doctoral student he was at Harvard Medical School with Ronald C. Desrosiers . From 1994 he headed a working group at the Institute for Clinical and Molecular Virology at the University Hospital Erlangen , where he qualified as a professor in 1996 on the possibility of vaccination with weakened HIV pathogens. In 2001 he became a professor at the Medical Faculty of Ulm University , where he received a full professorship in 2009 and became head of the Institute for Molecular Virology.

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He investigated the special differences between HIV and immunodeficiency viruses in monkeys, which generally do not cause disease in them. In particular, he recognized the key role of the virus’s Nef protein , which he has been working with since his time at Harvard. With his doctoral student Michael Schindler , he made significant advances in this area around 2005 in the elucidation of the exact mechanism of the different effects of Nef in SIV and HIV.

Another focus of his research is the question of how immunodeficiency viruses overcome the species barrier and hide from or bypass the immune system and the characterization of host factors that influence the infection. He and his group isolated a small peptide (VIRIP, length 20 amino acids) in human blood that blocks the multiplication of HIV. On the other hand, he also found a protein in the seminal fluid that, as it were, traps the HIV through its fibers and promotes penetration into cells, which could explain the high level of infectivity during sexual intercourse. The host factors found offer approaches for new forms of therapy and prevention in AIDS.

HIV-1 crossed the species boundary between great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas) and humans at least four times, but only group M of the virus triggered a pandemic, groups O, P, N remained limited to West Africa. Kirchhoff and colleagues investigated the reasons for this and they suspect that group M succeeded in effectively switching off the protein tetherin with the viral protein VPU; With tetherin, the body not only defends itself against the release of HIV, but also against other viruses (such as Ebola virus , herpes viruses ). According to Kirchhoff and colleagues, the immediate HIV-1 precursor in chimpanzees still used Nef to switch off tetherin, but this does not work effectively against human tetherin and thus represented a species barrier that was overcome by the use of vpu in HIV-1, whereby the other important function of vpu for the virus to remove CD4 receptors from the cell surface was preserved.

Memberships and honors

He is a member of the National AIDS Advisory Board (2012). In 2009 he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize . In 2012 he received one of the highly endowed Advanced Grants from the European Research Council . In 2013 he received the Ernst Schering Prize endowed with 50,000 euros . He has been a member of the Leopoldina since 2009 .

Fonts

  • "Optimal" adaptation of pandemic HIV-1 strains to humans. In: BIOspectrum. 2, 2010, pp. 144-148, pdf
  • Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), in: Hans W. Doerr, Wolfram Gerlich (Ed.) Medical Virology , Thieme, Stuttgart 2010, p. 315ff

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Isolation, biological and genetic characterization of an HIV-2 clone to investigate the negative regulatory factor and chimeras between HIV-2 and the HIV-1 envelope protein
  2. ↑ Virus Inhibitory Peptide, an antagonist of the virus protein gp41
  3. ↑ Sauter, Schindler, Kirchhoff et al. a. The evolution of pandemic and non-pandemic HIV-1 strains has been driven by Tetherin antagonism , Cell Host Microbe, 6, 2009, pp. 409-421, PMC 2779047 (free full text)
  4. ^ Leibniz Prize for Kirchhoff
  5. ↑ ERC Advanced Grant to Kirchhoff ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-ulm.de
  6. ↑ Member entry by Frank Kirchhoff (with picture) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 15, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Kirchhoff, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German virologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Buckeburg