The only natural host of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is humans. Model organisms for laboratory studies, especially mice, cannot be infected which makes the search for a vaccine against HCV extremely difficult because the protective effect cannot be tested directly. In order to understand why the virus cannot infect mice and to enable the development of new animal models, researchers at TWINCORE in Hannover have generated an adapted virus variant that can infect mouse liver cells in vitro. They have now published their work in the Journal of Hepatology Reports. The TWINCORE is a joint institution of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and Hannover Medical School (MHH).

Viruses are masters at disguise. When they are pushed too far by our immune system, they send new virus variants into play that are no longer recognized by immune cells. They escape our immune system by mutating the virus structures that are recognized by antibodies. In order to adapt vaccines to new circulating virus variants as promptly as possible, it is first necessary to find out which among the numerous mutations are actually responsible for the immune escape of a new virus variant. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), in collaboration with the Hannover Medical School (MHH), have developed a method called reverse mutational scanning that can be used to detect such mutations quickly and reliably. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the results of the latest round of its “Proof of Concept Grant” 2024 competition. Among the researchers selected for funding is Prof. Yang Li, co-director of the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM) and head of the research department “Bioinformatics for Individualised Medicine”, who has thus been awarded one of the coveted ERC grants for the second time. In total, the ERC selected 134 projects for funding of 150,000 euros each. The CiiM is a branch of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), which is operated jointly with the Hannover Medical School (MHH).