Month: March 2023

Farewell event for RKI President Prof. Dr Lothar H. Wieler

29. March 2023

Prof. Suerbaum spoke in Berlin on 28.03.2023 at the farewell event in honour of the outgoing RKI President Lothar H. Wieler. As Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Robert Koch Institute, Prof. Suerbaum worked together with Prof. Wieler in a spirit of trust during his eight years in office. The further development of the RKI from an infection institute to a public health institute for Germany, which took place under the leadership of Prof. Wieler, was recently analysed by the advisory board in a statement and future fields of action were presented. During his time as RKI President, Prof. Wieler rendered great services to the fight against infectious diseases in Germany and worldwide.

 

Rare meeting of four presidents on the occasion of the farewell of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Lothar H. Wieler as President of the Robert Koch Institute on 28.03.2023

From left: Prof. Dr. Lothar H. Wieler (RKI President 2015-2023), Prof. Dr. Jörg H. Hacker (seated, RKI President 2008-2010), Prof. Dr. Reinhard Burger (RKI President 2010-2015), Dr. Antje Draheim (State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health), Prof. Dr. Klaus Cichutek (President of the Paul Ehrlich Institute). Copyright: Prof. Dr. S. Suerbaum

 

Statement of the Scientific Advisory Board on the Role of the RKI for Public Health in Germany

Review articles in Current Opinion summarize research results of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 900

22. March 2023

The Collaborative Research Center SFB 900 (Chronic Infections) funded research on chronic infections from 2010 to the end of 2022. The research results of this collaborative project, coordinated by Prof. Thomas Schulz (MH Hannover), have now been summarized in a special issue of the journals Current Opinion in Immunology and Current Opinion in Virology. LMU scientists Prof. Dr. Christine Josenhans and Prof. Dr. Sebastian Suerbaum are founding members of SFB 900 and have played a major role in the success of the SFB as board member and deputy spokesperson, respectively, first at MHH and since 2016/2017 in Munich.

The two review articles provide a good overview of the development of the research and are available for free download for 50 days via these links:

Review Innate immune activation and modulatory factors of Helicobacter pylori towards phagocytic and nonphagocytic cells by L. Faass, M. Hauke, S. C. Stein and Christine Josenhans.

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1glqI3OeyGHV%7E9

Review Genome and population dynamics during chronic infection with Helicobacter pylori

by F. Ailloud and Sebastian Suerbaum

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gncz3OeyGHV%7Ej

 

Publication in Nature Communication

The carcinogenic bacterium Helicobacter pylori has accompanied humans for about 100,000 years. The bacterium’s genes reflect the history of this millennia-long association and also allow conclusions to be drawn about human migration movements (Falush, …, Achtman & Suerbaum, Science 2003). The LMU microbiologist Prof. Sebastian Suerbaum, in collaboration with an international consortium of scientists, including from the Institut Pasteur in Shanghai and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, has now been able to show with the help of new analytical methods that the Helicobacter pylori bacteria resident in Europe today are the result of several migratory movements from Africa. The exchange between the genomes of bacteria formerly resident in Europe with bacteria that African immigrants brought with them in their stomachs has made important contributions to the evolution of H. pylori and made it possible to optimise the bacterial genomes by selection. In contrast, H. pylori genomes in Asia have significantly fewer traces of African H. pylori.

The results, published in the renowned journal Nature Communications, provide a fascinating insight into the role of human migration in the evolution of this important pathogen.

Original publication: Repeated out-of-Africa expansions of Helicobacter pylori driven by replacement of deleterious mutations. Harry Thorpe#, Elise Tourrette#, Koji Yahara#, …, Sebastian Suerbaum*, Kaisa Thorell*, Daniel Falush*.

# co-first authors; * co-last authors.

Nature Communications doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-34475-3

Link zur Originalpublikation (Open Access)