Cellular Aspects of Host-Pathogen Interactions

Source: Paul-Ehrlich-Institut

Research Focus

Since viruses are dependent on the host cell machinery to replicate and they also have to overcome intrinsic and innate cellular restrictions, understanding the molecular mechanism of both host and innate immune factors will significantly facilitate the development of novel therapeutic and vaccination strategies aimed at combating current and emerging pathogenic viral infections.

We seek to gain insights into the dynamic interactions affecting virus replication, with the primary goal of elucidating innate immune factors. Our interests lie in identifying novel regulators of innate pathways and understanding how viruses are recognised by the innate immune system.

We discovered numerous cellular proteins and pathways affecting the replication of Influenza and HIV-1 by using genome-wide arrayed RNAI screening technologies complemented by proteomics and meta-analysis approaches (König et al., Nature 2010; König et al., Cell, 2008; Tripathi et al., Cell Host & Microbe, 2015). We identified a novel negative regulator of the STING-mediated interferon response (Guo et al., Cell Host & Microbe, 2016) and in cooperation a novel co-sensor of HIV-1 (Yoh et al., Cell, 2015; Yoh et al., Molecular Cell, 2022). We analyzed the molecular regulatory mechanism of a novel factor that restricts HIV  replication (Schott et al., Nature Communication, 2018). To investigate the mechanism of host factors in more detail, we have established the following technologies:

• iPSC technology to provide suitable primary models for the analysis of innate pathways (Fuchs et al., Stem Cell Research, 2020), combined with
• gene editing by CRISPR/Cas9, which enables knockouts or knock-ins and allows the investigation of specific residues (Schüssler et al., mBIO, 2023; Lin et al., Cell Reports, 2023).

Furthermore, our lab has expanded to include data scientists (led by Dr Liam Childs), that focus on next-generation sequencing analysis and artificial intelligence (AI).

Research Group Head

Dr Renate König
Publications
Curriculum Vitae
Phone: +49 6103 77 4019
Email: Renate.Koenig@pei.de

Research Projects

• In the BLOODVIR project, a viral metagenomics technology was developed that allows us to detect all vertebrate viruses and identify unexpected and unknown viruses with high sensitivity, high throughput, and lower costs. Our developed bioinformatics pipeline, including an AI pipeline for the detection of novel viruses, ensures clear, interpretable results (WHO/BS/2024.2471).
• The KIMERBA and RENUBIA projects focus on the application of AI to support regulators and assessors at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (Zeidi et al., IEEE Access, 2025) and the benefit-risk assessment of AI in regulation, respectively (Bulashevska et al., Frontiers in Immunology, 2024; EMA/CHMP/CVMP/83833/2023).

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