Bürger-Uni

Ulrike Protzer heads the Institute of Virology at Helmholtz Zentrum München and holds the Chair of Virology at the Technical University of Munich. She is a specialist in internal medicine and in microbiology and virology. For years, she has been involved in the molecular biology of viruses, the interaction of viruses with their host, humans, and the development and control of viral diseases. She has published approximately 200 original publications and 50 review articles, as well as a number of patents.

Her research focuses on the interaction of viruses with their host, i.e., humans and their immune systems. One focus is on the hepatitis B virus, which claims the lives of more than 850,000 people each year after insidious infection. Together with her team, she is working on innovative therapeutic approaches that fight the virus with the help of the immune system. Similar to tumor therapy, T cells are targeted to infected cells through vaccines or designer molecules to eliminate the virus. Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, she has been intensively studying the new SARS coronavirus and ways to control the pandemic through vaccination and the development of new therapies. Through innovative model systems and analytical methods, she has been able to make great progress in exploring new therapeutic approaches, especially in the last 2-3 years.