Ruhr University Bochum on April 5, 2023
Prof. Dr. Stephanie Pfänder has been researching corona viruses for years; With the outbreak of the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic, her work gained unprecedented attention in 2020. With a lot of work, she and her team have contributed to getting to know and assess the new virus better. On March 29, 2023, the researcher from the Department of Molecular and Medical Virology at the Ruhr University Bochum was awarded the Loeffler Frosch Prize 2023 by the Society for Virology. The award was given “in recognition of her outstanding basic and application-oriented research work on the propagation of corona viruses, their interaction with the host cell and virus inactivation”.
characteristics of the virus explored
Stephanie Pfänder tries to decipher the complex connections in the body that can prevent an infection. As early as 2020, she was able to show that certain endogenous proteins, the so-called interferon-stimulated genes like the protein LY6E, prevent coronaviruses from triggering an infection.
The use of interferons to defend against viruses as the body’s first line of defense against infection was also the focus of another study, which showed how the innate immune system copes better with Sars-Cov-2. The work not only shed light on the basics of the body’s immune defense against the virus, but also lays the foundation for new treatment options for high-risk patients during the early phase of an infection.
In addition to examining the body’s own defenses, the team is also working on the exact mechanisms that make viral infection possible in the first place. The researchers were able to show that corona viruses need certain cellular proteins in order to multiply successfully in the cells. This not only contributes to a better understanding of the virus, but also opens up new targets for potential antiviral drugs.
In addition to these and other works in basic research, Stephanie Pfänder has published numerous works in clinical virology related to public health issues. As early as the beginning of 2020, when disinfectants were scarce, the researchers checked the effectiveness of two formulations recommended by the World Health Organization against Sars-Cov-2. A little later a paper appeared in which they worked out how long the virus remains infectious at different ambient temperatures on different surfaces.
In order to quickly and reliably determine how many neutralizing antibodies a patient sample contains, Stephanie Pfänder co-developed and evaluated a new test, which delivers significantly faster results than tests used to date. The test can be used, among other things, to evaluate vaccine candidates and monoclonal antibodies that could be a treatment option for corona sufferers. Another widely cited work was able to show that certain mouthwashes in cell cultures have an antiviral effect against Sars-Cov-2 and thus potentially reduce the viral load in the mouth and throat of infected people.
In a recent study, the team also investigated the adaptive and humoral Dedicated to immunity after various vaccinations against Sars-Cov-2.
In 2022, Pfänder started together with Dr. Folke Brinkmann from the children’s clinic at the Ruhr University in Bochum started a one-year research project that aims to show how contagious aerosols are in children.