Research Report 2010 2011 - Helmholtz-Zentrum für ...

28 RESEARCH REVIEWS | Frontier Runners of Hepatitis C Virus
Prof. Pietschmann and his work group. Photo: Twincore/HZI
Sandra Ciesek born 1978 in Goslar, studied medicine in
Göttingen and Hannover and received her M.D. degree with
honours under Prof. M. P. Manns and Dr. H. Wedemeyer
at the Clinic for Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology
at the MHH (Hannover Medical School). Sandra
Ciesek received numerous prizes for her doctoral thesis and
has been working since then as Assistant Physician in the
Department Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology
and as a scholarship-funded scientist at TWINCORE with
Prof. Thomas Pietschmann. Under the auspices of an individually
contracted position funded by the German Research
Foundation (DFG), she is now doing research at TWINCORE
on the influence of cyclosporine A on the hepatitis C nonstructural
protein NS2.
Thomas Pietschmann born in 1971 in Würzburg, studied
biology with emphasis on biochemistry, animal physiology,
virology and immunobiology at the University of Würzburg
and the Duke University (Durham, NC, USA). After completing
his studies in 1996, he received his Ph.D. degree
in biology at the Institute for Virology of the University
of Würzburg and subsequently worked as postdoc at the
Institute for Virology in Mainz and in the Department for
Molecular Virology in the University Clinic of Heidelberg.
Thomas Pietschmann established there an independent
research group that investigated the mechanisms of morphogenesis
and cell entry of the hepatitis C virus. From the
year 2006 his group was supported by an Emmy Noether
fellowship from the German Research Community (Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft). In the spring of 2007 he was
appointed with his work group to TWINCORE. He now leads
the Department for Experimental Virology there.
Eike Steinmann born 1978 in Bremen, studied biology at
Leibniz University Hannover, with emphasis on Virology,
Microbiology and Molecular Biology. After a DAAD scholarship
for study at Northeastern University in Boston, he
completed his diploma dissertation under Prof. Herrler at
the Institute for Virology of the Veterinary University of
Hannover. For his Ph.D. thesis Eike Steinmann changed to
the Department for Molecular Virology at the University
Clinic of Heidelberg and did research in the group of Prof.
Bartenschlager regarding the function of p7 protein in the
HCV replication cycle. With his advisor, Prof. Thomas
Pietsch mann, he then was appointed to TWINCORE. His
research is now concentrated on various aspects of the HCV
assembly process and its release, as well as a search for
new antiviral targets. Furthermore, he is examining the
environmental stability and susceptibility of HCV to disinfection
agents.