IVTUD Dresden, DE

Role and contribution

The Institute of Virology at the Technical University of Dresden is a diagnostic and research laboratory with 29 members, among which 12 are involved in virological diagnostics at the University Hospital of Dresden, and 17 are directly involved in fundamental and clinical research in the field of molecular virology. This latter field encompasses the domains of molecular biology, biochemistry and cellular biology. IVTUD is also the coordinator of 3 clinical virology projects for the development of new strategies in the management of viral infections (ref. 1), particularly after bone marrow transplantation (ref. 2), and 1 environmental project for assessing the risk of viral infection in river water (ref. 3). A relatively recent and important task addresses the molecular epidemiology of acute gastroenteritis caused by human caliciviruses and astroviruses. The main expertise of IVTUD is the development of new strategies for the detection and characterization of human calicivirus, astrovirus and adenovirus infections (ref. 4), as well as the phylogenetic analysis of human calicivirus and astrovirus strains (ref. 5). The scientists involved in the projects are : J. Rohayem, who is IVTUD Principal investigator and the scientific group leader ; D. Bandt, is a senior scientist in charge of the diagnostics laboratory ; K. Boer, is a young scientist in charge of the quality control of molecular technology ; W. Rudolph, a senior scientist, is in charge of viral protein expression and purification. J. Gebhardt, a doctoral fellow, is in charge of the characterization of recombinant strains by phylogenetic analysis. K. Jäger, is technical assistant and in charge of use and maintainance of molecular biology and proteomics robots.