Institute for Medical Virology Giessen
The Institute for Medical Virology has been a research facility at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen since 1966 . The institute emerged from interdisciplinary research in the veterinary, human and biological departments and, when it was founded, housed the first independent chair for medical virology in what was then Germany. The first professor was Hans Joachim Eggers (1966–1972) followed by Heinz Bauer (1973–1990, President of the University of Giessen from 1987), Wolfram H. Gerlich (1991–2010) and John Ziebuhr (since 2010). From 1996 to 2010 the institute was the national consultative laboratory for hepatitis B and hepatitis D viruses of the Robert Koch Institute and has been the national reference center for HBV and HDV since 2011 . It has been part of the German Center for Infection Research since 2012 .
history
Giessen virology until the institute was founded
The earliest work on virus infections at the Institute for Hygiene of the Faculty of Human Medicine in Gießen can be traced back to Georg Gaffky (1850–1918), Robert Koch's colleague and later successor . The research was limited to disease descriptions, since the viruses had not yet been characterized as an independent infectious agent and cultivation in the laboratory was not yet successful. Rudolf Otto Neumann (1868–1952) dealt with rabies infections in 1912 , but research into viral infections was not yet an independent subject and remained an exotic branch of hygiene and bacteriology until the development of cell culture and electron microscopy .
With the support of the Hygiene Institute of the Medical Faculty, the Veterinary Faculty, which has been independent since 1914, founded its own institute for veterinary hygiene , bacteriology, veterinary police and animal disease studies in 1924 (from 1926 Institute for veterinary hygiene and animal disease studies). Wilhelm Zwick (1871–1941) was the first full professor of the new chair to deal primarily with viral diseases and the like. a. the rinderpest and the Borna disease . Zwick pursued the project for establishing a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Animal Disease Research in Giessen, but that by the DC circuit was not realized at the University from 1933 and the death Zwick. After the war, Elmar Roots (1900–1962) took over the veterinary medical institute and deepened the focus on virology even further. In 1955 he acquired the first transmission electron microscope and ultracentrifuge from the University of Giessen; In addition to cell culture, these were the fundamental apparatus on which virological research was based until the 1960s. At Roots received his doctorate Rudolf Rott (1926-2003), who after a short stay at the "Max-Planck Institute for Virus Research" in Tübingen (now MPI for Developmental Biology Habilitation) at Roots and 1964 on the first chair of Virology (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine) in Giessen was appointed.
Due to the division of labor in the faculty structure, according to which virological topics had been strongly represented at the veterinary faculty since 1924, no separate department for virology was established at the human medical institute for hygiene and bacteriology. This deviates from the usual development of other virological institutions in German-speaking countries. The fact that virology was not represented independently in the human medicine faculty was particularly evident from Rott's research focus, who dealt with influenza viruses together with Christoph Scholtissek and Rudolf Dernick . These viruses represent in a special way the interaction between human and animal infections. For a planned virological research network on site and its expansion in a planned special research area , an independent medical chair was required, which was established in 1966 and to which Hans Joachim Eggers was appointed on June 23, 1966. Eggers discovered the RNA polymerase of the poliovirus at Rockefeller University in New York and characterized its mutations after he had previously obtained his doctorate at the MPI for Virus Research in Tübingen.
The first laboratories of the new institute were located behind the Institute for Poultry Diseases in a former stable building on Gaffkystraße. Like its partner institute for veterinary medicine, it had the same name as “Institute for Virology”, but with the addition “Department of Human Medicine”. In order to avoid confusion, the term Institute for Medical Virology became more and more common in the 1980s.
SFB 47 and MZI building
Eggers and Rott designed what was then a new type of research network, which in 1968 resulted in the establishment of the Collaborative Research Center 47 “Mechanisms of Viruses Pathogenicity”. This brought together other research groups at the university, such as biochemistry, pharmacology, microbiology and later plant virology . A research group emerged from the CRC 47, which existed exceptionally long until 1988, and Rott also remained its spokesman until his retirement in 1994. When the SFB was founded, the premises were limited and in 1968 the university began building an interdisciplinary research center at Frankfurterstrasse 107, the so-called multi-purpose institute (MZI), which was considered exemplary at the time. This building was tailored to the needs of the SFB and after its successive occupation in 1970/1972 housed all relevant institutes of the research association. The bundling of three virological institutes (veterinary virology, human virology and plant virology) in a single research building was unique in Europe at the time.
In 1970 Eggers accepted Hans-Dieter Klenk, who had come from New York, as an assistant in the Institute for Medical Virology, with which the veterinary-virological working groups on influenza viruses found a human medical supplement. A research group around Gisela and Gerd Wengler was also set up to deal with other RNA viruses, the alpha and flaviviruses . The first head of the newly established diagnostic department was Jan Leidel , who followed Eggers to Cologne University in 1973.
In 1973, Heinz Bauer , who came from the MPI in Tübingen and established the then still young research field of retrovirology at the institute , became the new chair holder . In the same year, Hans-Dieter Klenk received a C3 professorship at the institute, which he held until he was appointed to the Institute for Virology in Marburg in 1985. Heinz Bauer became President of the Justus Liebig University in 1987, which meant that the chair remained vacant for a long time. The retrovirologist Roland Friedrich , who was appointed to the C3 professorship in 1986 and came from the laboratory of Michael Bishop and Harald Varmus in San Francisco, took over the provisional management of the institute. He devoted himself to the investigation of virus-induced leukemia , in particular the Friend leukemia virus .
The "Giessen School of Virology"
From the beginning, many research groups worked at the institute, from which nationally and internationally important virologists emerged. In addition to Hans-Dieter Klenk (Director of the Institute for Virology Marburg), this group, known as the "Giessen School of Virology", also includes Robert Friis , Teruko Tamura , Heiner Niemann (Director of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute ), Angelika Barnekow (professorship at the University of Münster ), Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff (Director of the Georg-Speyer-Haus ), Bernhard Fleischer (Director of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine ) and Masanori Hayami (Director of the Institute for Virus Research, Kyoto).
SFB 535 and consulting laboratory
Bauer's successor as director was Wolfram H. Gerlich in 1991 , who previously worked at the Göttingen Institute for Hygiene under Reiner Thomssen (Head of the Medical Microbiology Department, Center for Hygiene and Human Genetics at the University of Kreuzbergring 57) and at Stanford University under William S. Robinson had worked on the hepatitis B virus (HBV). The Göttingen Institute was then the national reference center for hepatitis viruses. Among other things, Gerlich characterized the surface protein of HBV (HBs antigen) and discovered for the first time the covalent binding of a protein to a viral genome. With his appointment, further employees gradually came to Gießen from Göttingen, who dealt with various aspects of the Hepadnaviridae and the then newly discovered hepatitis C virus .
Since the SFB 272, which emerged from the SFB 47 and was initiated by Gerd Hobom , existed at that time and this was only granted a short application period foreseeably, Gerlich established a new SFB from 1995, which, following on from the existing interdisciplinary structures in Giessen, also added virological Should involve research groups from Marburg. This finally succeeded in 1997 with the SFB 535 (Invasion Mechanisms and Replication Strategies of Pathogens). This SFB 535, coordinated by the Institute for Medical Virology, existed in the maximum application period until 2009 and significantly shaped the infection research of various institutes in Giessen.
In 1996, the institute was appointed the national consultative laboratory for hepatitis B and D, whereby it was commissioned at national and international level, among other things, with questions of standardization, clarification of cases of transmission, the efficiency of vaccine preparations, test procedures and procedures for virus inactivation and virus safety with regard to HBV and HDV . The continuing close cooperation with the WHO , the Paul Ehrlich Institute and the Robert Koch Institute date from this time .
New research building
With Gerlich's retirement in 2010, the tasks as a consulting laboratory ended as intended, and in the previous year the maximum duration of the SFB 535. With the appointment of virologist John Ziebuhr from Queen's University Belfast , the chair could be filled again in the same year. Ziebuhr previously worked in Würzburg on the molecular biology of coronaviruses and was involved in the characterization and detection of the SARS coronavirus in China. After the end of the consultation laboratory, the tasks of such a laboratory were redefined by the RKI and, due to the increased importance of the pathogens, an upgrade to the reference center was recommended and advertised as such. Following a new selection procedure in 2011, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research made the institute the National Reference Center (NRZ) for hepatitis B and D viruses.
The planning of a new research building for the institutes of the MZI had been advanced since the 1990s. After structural delays, the institute was able to move to the new Biomedical Research Center Seltersberg (BFS) in March 2012 , as the work in the MZI building, which is now over 40 years old, no longer met the requirements for virological work. Ziebuhr was elected the first spokesman for the FSO. In 2012, together with the Marburg virologist Stephan Becker, he succeeded in founding the SFB 1021 ( RNA viruses: RNA metabolism, host response and pathogenesis ), which once again merged the three virological institutes (veterinary and human virology in Giessen, human virology in Marburg) into a research network. In the same year the Institute for Medical Virology became part of the German Center for Infection Research .
swell
- Christian G. Schüttler: The Institute for Medical Virology . In: Volker Roelke (ed.): The Medical Faculty of the University of Giessen. From the re-establishment in 1957 to the present , Frankfurt 2007 pp. 88–94 ISBN 978-3-7973-1063-7
- Manfred Messing: Virology - a special research area of the Giessen University . In: Gießener Universitätsblätter (1973), 6th year, issue 2, pp. 61–67
- Rudolf Rott and Stuart Sidell: One hundred years of animal virology . Journal of General Virology (1998) 79: pp. 2871-2874
- Hans-Dieter Klenk: Rudolf Rott (1926-2003) - a life for virus research (obituary, pdf; 482 kB)
- Wolfram H. Gerlich: Collaborative Research Center 535 “Invasion Mechanisms and Replication Strategies of Pathogens”. Giessener Universitätsblätter 2006: 39, pages 67-75
- Klaus Munk: Virology in Germany: the development of a specialty. Karger, Freiburg i. B. (1995) ISBN 3805560044 pp. 74f