Michael Schindler

Michael Schindler (* 1978 in Ulm ) is a German virologist , known for discovering the pathogenicity of HIV .

Life

Schindler studied biology at the University of Ulm with his degree in 2002. He discovered in his highly acclaimed doctoral thesis at the University Clinic Ulm (Institute for Virology) in 2006 the cause of the pathogenicity of HIV (AIDS) compared to related monkey viruses. Schindler's doctoral supervisor Frank Kirchhoff demonstrated the central role of the Nef protein in AIDS as early as 1995 when he demonstrated that the virus could not multiply properly when the Nef protein was switched off (in vitro and in rhesus monkeys ).

While the approximately 40 known SIVs hardly damage their monkey hosts, this is not the case with HIV-1 and HIV-2, which were transmitted from monkeys to humans - they activate the T helper cells via their Nef protein while in SIV the Nef protein prevents activation (by removing the CD3 molecule from the T cell receptor ). In HIV-1, the Nef protein was changed in the course of evolution in such a way that the CD3 molecule is no longer removed - the T helper cells are activated, which ultimately leads to overactivation and subsequent exhaustion of the immune system.

In 2007 he became a junior research group leader for virus pathogenesis at the Heinrich Pette Institute in Hamburg. There he dealt with host factors in viral pathogenesis and investigates not only AIDS but also hepatitis C. With his group, he developed a method to demonstrate the interaction of proteins in living cells during virus infection (BSL3 live cell imaging). Since 2011 he has been at the Institute for Virology, Helmholtz Center Munich .

In 2012, together with Herwig Koppensteiner and others, he described how HIV hides in the membrane system of macrophages from the host's immune system and thus forms a reservoir.

In 2007 he received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for young scientists for the discoveries made in his dissertation and in the same year the Novartis Prize for Therapeutic Research, the AIDS Prize of the German AIDS Society, the CROI Young Investigators Award ( Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections) and a prize at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting . In 2010 he received the Robert Koch Doctoral Prize. In 2013 Schindler was awarded the Eva and Klaus Grohe Prize .

Fonts (selection)

• Schindler, J. Münch, O. Kutsch, Kirchhoff a. a .: Nef-mediated suppression of T cell activation was lost in a lentiviral lineage that gave rise to HIV-1 . In: Cell , Vol. 125, 2006, pp. 1055-1067, PMID 16777597 .
• Herwig Koppensteiner, Ruth Brack-Werner, Schindler: Macrophages and their relevance in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type I infection . In: Retrovirology , Volume 9, 2012, p. 82

Web links

• Description of his research Ulm University
• Article Biopro
• Homepage at the Helmholtz Center Munich

Individual evidence

1. ↑ HIV-1 from chimpanzees - probably early 20th century - HIV-2 from soot reports
2. ^ H. Koppensteiner, C. Banning, C. Schneider, H. Hohenberg, M. Schindler: Macrophage internal HIV-1 is protected from neutralizing antibodies . In: J. of Virology , Volume 86, 2012, pp. 2826–2836, press release Helmholtz-Zentrum 2012 ( Memento of the original from June 25, 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. 
3. ^ Robert Koch PhD Award 2010
4. ↑ Heinrich Pette Institute for the Koch Prize 2010  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.