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Groundbreaking for the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM)
"The COVID-19 pandemic has just shown us how important infection research and personalised medicine are - and that research findings need to to be transferred more quickly from bench to bedside," said Lower Saxony's Science Minister Falko Mohrs. “The life sciences are…
Clinical Bioinformatics
Personalized medicine offers a significant opportunity to enhance public health by accounting for individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle. The "Clinical Bioinformatics" research group follows this direction, aiming to unravel the intricate molecular mechanisms underlying infection and aging. Through this pursuit, we strive to develop precise, individualized treatment strategies. Our research aims to develop and apply "bioinformatics approaches" to pinpoint the genetic and epigenetic factors influencing infection-induced immune responses by integrating multi-omics data from patients and constructing computational models that predict an individual’s risk of infectious diseases. We interact with experimental collaborators and clinical experts to verify our findings and promote their translation into medical treatments or diagnostic procedures. Our ultimate goal is to contribute to the main research focus of CiiM/MHH: the tailored and improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of infectious diseases and cancer for individual patients or patient groups. Within this framework, the team led by Prof. Dr. Cheng-Jian Xu is primarily dedicated to the domains of diagnosis, risk assessment, early detection, and patient stratification.
Computational Biology for Individualised Medicine
Infections are among the biggest threats to health and the most significant causes of death worldwide. Our aim is to reveal the host genetic risk factors and their downstream molecular pathways, which are crucial to make progress in understanding and treating infectious diseases in an individualised manner as well as to improve the identification of patients at risk. The department of the HZI is part of the developing CiiM and currently housed at the TWINCORE in Hannover. Our group currently has 6 PhD students and 5 postdocs. Students and postdocs – We are always looking for bright and enthusiastic students and postdocs (funded by e.g. the ERC starting grant). For more about our projects, please contact us by email.
Who benefits from immunotherapy against hepatitis B?
It is estimated that more than 250 million people worldwide are chronically infected with the hepatitis B virus. Cytotoxic T cells and T helper cells play an important role in fighting viral infections. The constant activation of these immune cells in chronically…
The path to personalised hepatitis D treatment
Hepatitis D is caused by coinfection of hepatitis B patients with the hepatitis D virus (HDV). Up to 20 Million individuals are infected with HDV worldwide including about 250.000 patients in the European Union. There is very limited knowledge on disease pathophysiology…
When the skin aches
It was already known that in both psoriasis and neurodermatitis, T-cells of the immune system migrate from the blood into the skin and drive the inflammation there. Detailed examination of T-cells in blood and skin now led to evidence that in atopic dermatitis they…
COVID-19 Patientenkohorte hilft bei Aufklärung des Patientenrisikos
Aus der MHH stammen Bioproben und Daten der „ COVID-19-Kohorte “, die seit März 2020 von unterschiedlich stark am Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 erkrankten Patientinnen und Patienten sowie Kontrollproben von Menschen mit anderen Atemwegserkrankungen aus verschiedenen…
Joint symposium of HZI and McGill University on personalised infection medicine
Personalised infection medicine aims to take into account individual differences in the diagnosis and therapy of infectious diseases. The HZI and McGill University have been building a strategic cooperation on this topic for several years. Clinicians and scientists from…
Individualised Medicine for Viral Infections
Opportunistic infections remain a serious threat to immunocompromised individuals, such as transplant recipients. We study opportunistic herpes viruses, such as the cytomegalovirus (CMV) by developing unique technologies for real-time measurement of virus growth, allowing us rapid identification of antiviral activity of primary samples and virtually any immune cell subset. This allows us to identify at-risk populations and develop targeted antiviral therapies for treatment and prevention of opportunistic viral infections. In the course of the COVID pandemic, our expertise in virus genetics was used to clone pseudoviruses expressing variants of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein for the assessment of the neutralization capacity of sera or monoclonal antibodies, and this technology is pursued in the identification of correlates of immune protection in vaccinated or convalescent populations. We team with local and international teams of physicians and epidemiologists, providing technical support and scientific advice on complex laboratory serological diagnostics. In March 2019, Prof Dr. Dr. Luka Cicin-Sain was jointly appointed by the MHH (Hannover Medical School) and HZI (Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research) as CIIM Professor for "Individualised Medicine of Viral Infections", and as of 2021 he leads the CiiM-associated Department of “Viral Immunology” (VIRI) at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig.
Personalised Immunotherapy
Our motivation is to address fundamental questions of human immunology and translate them into personalized therapies and diagnostics. Specifically, our laboratory discovers new applications of antibodies and B cells to treat and prevent human infectious diseases. Effective vaccines against some viruses that escape antibody responses remain elusive. To tackle this challenge, we develop methods to better understand B cell responses, the cells that produce antibodies. We design tailored vaccines and provide novel solutions for infection diagnostics.