2024-07-12 21:47:03
At the Med-Uni Vienna, biologist Hannes Vietzen is researching how the complex interaction between viruses and our immune system affects the development of disease.
Virology was “love at first sight” for him, says Hannes Vietzen, biologist and university assistant Center for Virology Medical University of Vienna. The German scientist started on viruses as a research topic while studying microbiology and immunology at the University of Vienna when he happened to attend a seminar at the institute. “I was very interested in how such a microscopic virus can completely incapacitate large, complex people.” He then decided to complete his master’s thesis in the research group of Elisabeth Puchhammer-Stöckl, head of the center. This was followed by a successful doctorate and then a postdoctoral fellowship – culminating in ten years of virus research.
This gave Hannes Vietzen enough time to work with the Puchhammer-Stöckl team to answer one of the most burning questions in virology: the link between Epstein-Barr viruses (EBV) and multiple sclerosis (MS). It has long been suspected that there is a possible link between EBV infection and the development of autoimmune disease, in which the outer insulating layer of nerve cells (myelin) is severely damaged by one’s own immune system due to a misguided immune reaction. The result is a wide range of neurological symptoms, from visual impairment to pain and numbness.
Holy Grail of MS research
Although it has long been known that Symptomatic EBV infection – also known as Pfeiffer glandular fever – is a major risk factor for the later development of MS, researchers at Stanford University have only discovered the likely cause in 2022. Through cross-immunity , antibodies actually formed against the EBV virus also bind to nerve cell structures and thereby affect the development and maintenance of the insulating myelin. A crucial question remains unanswered: Although EBV infections are widespread and more than 90 percent of all people infected with the virus are mostly harmless, only a few get multiple sclerosis. Why?
“Why do some people get multiple sclerosis and others don’t?”
Hannes Vietzen,
virologist
“We wanted to understand why only some people develop an autoimmune disease years after EBV infection. And in fact we found several factors that could solve this puzzle,” says Hannes Vietzen. He and the research team were able to do that in the specialist journal cell Published studies show that our own immune system has certain properties that lead in some cases to an excessive reaction and attack on the nerve pathways. “Normally, our body keeps immune reactions against ourselves under control. When most of these control mechanisms do not work the risk of MS increases significantly.” So-called natural killer cells and EBV-specific T cells suppress the autoimmune reaction in the vast majority of cases.
Vaccination that prevents MS?
Vietzen and his colleagues identified that there are, among other things, certain genetic risk factors that inhibit these protective immune cells and enable them to attack neurons. The virologist wants to continue his research: “If we could reliably predict in the future who will get MS and who won’t, we would have found the Holy Grail of MS research,” says Vietzen. “It will also be exciting to see if a vaccine against EBV can be developed that also prevents multiple sclerosis.”
He wants to continue to achieve this goal in Vienna, although he will be leaving his academic homeland for the moment and doing research with EBV experts at the University of Zurich for a year. Apart from the excellent scientific environment and Austrian art, the city itself has always fascinated him. For example, when he was studying history for the second time, it was home and subject of study: “Vienna is a very beautiful city – full of history and with the best food!”
A person
Hannes Vietzen (33) studied biology at the University of Konstanz and, since 2013, microbiology and immunology at the University of Vienna. After completing his master’s and doctorate in the Elisabeth Puchhammer-Stöckl research group at the Center for Virology at the Med-Uni Vienna, he became a postdoctoral researcher and university assistant there in 2020.
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