Andrea Thoma-Kress

A big „Thank You“ also to my fantastic organisation committee, to all members of my team and to @klausueberla.bsky.social I am looking forward to three exciting days on #HTLV with colleagues and friends😊.

We have three fantastic keynote speakers, Graham Taylor from
Imperial College London, Genoveffa Franchini from the NIH, and Amanda Panfil from The Ohio State University.
We are very grateful to all sponsors of this meeting: @dfg.de and @GRK2504, the BMBF (now BMFTR) and @infect-net.bsky.social

One day left! Starting tomorrow, we will host the #HTLV European Research Network (#HERN2025) meeting at the Institute of Clinical and Molecular Virology at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen and @fau.de. We expect more than 70 participants including leading experts in the field!

Too much protein in the diet appears to carry a risk of atherosclerotic heart disease secondary to leucine's effect. An important report considering recent advocacy for very high-protein diets.
@natmetabolism.nature.com
nature.com/articles/s42...

Roll-out of RSV vaccine and antibody treatment leads to massive drop in US hospitalisations Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the roll-out of preventive approaches has had an immediate impact on RSV rates.

Roll-out of RSV vaccine and antibody treatment leads to massive drop in US hospitalisations
www.gavi.org/vaccineswork...

Florian‘s thesis asked:
1️⃣ How is p8 generated from its precursor p12?
➡️ pre-print at www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...
2️⃣ To which cell types is p8 transferred?
3️⃣ What is p8 doing in its acceptor cells?
So stay tuned, there is more to come about Florian‘s findings this year.😀

Congrats to Florian Simon! 🎉 He submitted his PhD thesis today.
Looking forward to your defense! #ProudPI
What did Florian discover? 🔬
Florian studied the #HTLV protein p8, which is important for establishing infection in vivo.
p8 is a mobile protein and transferred to target cells within minutes.

It was a great pleasure to talk about prevention strategies and milk transmission of #HTLV at the 5th Infect-Net meeting @tum.de. Great to have such a powerful network of #WomeninScience.

Gruppenfoto der Gründungsmitglieder des Verbands Deutscher Infektionsforscherinnen - Infect-Net. Acht lächelnde Frauen stehen um ein Werbebanner des Frauennetzwerks Infect-Net. Eine Frau hält die unterschriebene Satzung in die Kamera. Foto: Kathrin Czoppelt.

🥂 Ein Grund zu Feiern: Wir haben den Verband Deutscher Infektionsforscherinnen gegründet! 👩‍🔬🦠🥳
Am 25. März 2025 haben wir in München einen Verein gegründet, um die Ziele und die Mission von #InfectNet langfristig weiterzuführen und weiterzuentwickeln. 💜 #megastolz
👉 www.infectnet.org/web/blog-pos...

📰✨ Wir sind sehr happy darüber, dass wir Infect-Net in der aktuellen Ausgabe des #BioSpektrums vorstellen durften! 🚀
Schaut mal rein:
👀👉 rdcu.be/efwbV

@gbmev.bsky.social @vaam-microbes.bsky.social @vbio.bsky.social @gabrielepradel.bsky.social @kkubatzky.bsky.social

🚀 It's a wrap! 🥂 At our 5th network meeting at @tum.de in Munich, we not only discussed issues of #globalhealth and #ethics in infection research, we also held the inaugural meeting of the German association of Women in #Infection Research! 💜 More details will follow shortly 🥳🤯 stay tuned!

Fear spreads that NIH will terminate grants involving South Africa Trump has promised to cut off funding, claiming nation discriminates against white citizens

“Health researchers who work in South Africa are on red alert after hearing today that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) could terminate all grants that fund work in that country within days.”
More concerning news here from Sara Reardon
🧪 #IDsky

S4F: Ein Appell von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern in Deutschland an die Politik als Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler in Deutschland sind wir in großer Sorge. Die Klima­krise und weitere Umweltkrisen (Biodiversitätsverlust, Überlastung biogeochemischer Stoffkreisläu­fe ......

Wer ist von einer dieser Unis? Habt Ihr da mitgemacht?

Wissenschaftler*in? Dann unterschreibt hier:
www.bayceer.uni-bayreuth.de/s4f/de/top/o...

Bundestagswahl: Wer die Wahl hat, hat es gut Die FAU unterstützt die Aktion #Zusammenland aus voller Überzeugung. Wer die Wahl hat, hat es gut. Das heißt nicht, dass alles immer einfach und simpel ist. Aber genau deshalb sind unsere Stimmen so…

Wer die Wahl hat, hat es gut. 🗳️ Das heißt nicht, dass alles immer einfach und simpel ist. Aber genau deshalb sind unsere Stimmen so wichtig.

👇Mehr zur Aktion #Zusammenland: www.fau.de/2025/02/news...

Ax falls on elite group of Ph.D.s training to lead U.S. public health labs Most of the fellows in CDC’s highly competitive Laboratory Leadership Service were fired last weekend

Most of the fellows in CDC’s highly competitive Laboratory Leadership Service were fired last weekend.

The ultracompetitive, 2-year program, which trains Ph.D. scientists in the intricacies of public health laboratory work. scim.ag/4gPy0te

'It’s tectonic:’ U.S. foreign aid freeze deals a blow to research around the globe Dismantling of USAID could disrupt many clinical trials and wipe away U.S. “soft power” in developing countries, scientists warn

“USAID-backed studies have been shuttered, data streams have dried up, researchers and technical staff have been fired or put on leave, a system to predict food crises has been muzzled, and a USAID-supported global health journal has stopped reviewing manuscripts.”

From our @science.org news team 🧪

US health agency seeks to cut gender-related terms from scientific papers The mandate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention follows an executive order from president Donald Trump, and applies to research not yet published.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has mandated that all scientific manuscripts produced by its researchers that are under review at a journal be withdrawn so that certain language relating to gender can be stripped from them.
https://go.nature.com/40YJGp4

Ein Junge mit einem Pflaster auf dem Oberarm lächelt in die Kamera. Daneben steht in einem orangenen Feld „Zahl des Monats“. Darunter die Zahl „2.900“ in großer, fetter Schrift, gefolgt von dem Text „Männer erkranken pro Jahr an einem HPV-bedingten Tumor“.

Am 4. Februar ist #Weltkrebstag – ein Anlass, auf HPV-bedingten Krebs bei Männern aufmerksam zu machen. #ZahldesMonats #HPV

💪 Die #STIKO empfiehlt auch Jungen die HPV-Impfung. Doch in Deutschland sind erst rund ein Drittel der 15-jährigen Jungen vollständig geimpft.

🔗 rki.de/zahldesmonats

Great news from #BayFrance!
They fund travel costs for the collaboration between Dr. Ignacio Fernández from @virusfusion007.bsky.social @pasteur.fr and us @fau.de to get a better understanding on #HTLV neutralization! We are looking forward to the scientific exchange with Ignacio! 👍🏻

Immune cell sequencing from birth to old age
"Using our lifecycle-wide single-cell dataset covering 13 age groups over the extent of the human lifespan...."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sie suchen #Infektionsforscherinnen? Wir haben ein #StarterPack mit allen Infect-Net-Wissenschaftlerinnen auf BlueSky zusammengestellt:
🇬🇧 Curious about contributions of women in #infection research? We put together a StarterPack with all our Infect-Net experts on BlueSky 🦋
👉 go.bsky.app/JU8KaeQ

Mitochondrial swap from cancer to immune cells thwarts anti-tumour defences Bidirectional transfer of mitochondria between cancer and immune cells.

The bidirectional transfer of mitochondria between cancer and immune cells is a newly discovered mechanism that thwarts anticancer defences

https://go.nature.com/3PNuEfh

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), one of the largest life sciences societies, is partnering with the GfV to advance virology research and global collaboration.

You can find more information here: asm.org/Press-Releas... (IVC)

Unsere Lieblingsbuchhandlung in Hannover ist auch dabei. Man kann alles online bestellen!
Aber zum Nachschauen nehme ich doch die Amazonen-Website. 😉

In a great collaboration with @hummerlab.bsky.social and the Kräusslich lab: HIV capsid doesn't break at the NPC; instead, it cracks open the NPC itself! Details in Cell: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... @mpibp.bsky.social @uniheidelberg.bsky.social A thread below:

FLI bestätigt Maul- und Klauenseuche bei Wasserbüffel aus Brandenburg Kurznachricht des Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut

Erstmals seit Ende der 1980er Jahre wurde in Deutschland wieder ein Fall von Maul- und Klauenseuche (MKS), verursacht durch das Maul- und Klauenseuche-Virus (MKSV; FMDV), bei Wasserbüffeln nachgewiesen, wie das Friedrich-Löffler-Institut berichtet.
www.fli.de/de/aktuelles...
(BM)

The potential importance of reactivation of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) as a contributing factor to developing Alzheimer's disease
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Best way to protect individuals from viruses is to block entry of viruses into the very first cells at the exposed mucosal site. Most important for HIV, since this avoids establishment of latently infected cells, that may reactivate the virus years later. Elie Richel now shows in a preclinical HIV model that monoclonal antibodies can do this this by neutralization, but not by Fc-effector functions.

Our paper on the mechanisms of sterlizing immunity against #HIV was just published at Plos Pathogens: doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Congrats to Elie Richel and many thanks to Christiane Stahl-Hennig for the long and fruitfull collaboration! 🧪 #AIDS

Alzheimer's disease‐associated CD83(+) microglia are linked with increased immunoglobulin G4 and human cytomegalovirus in the gut, vagal nerve, and brain INTRODUCTION While there may be microbial contributions to Alzheimer's disease (AD), findings have been inconclusive. We recently reported an AD-associated CD83(+) microglia subtype associated with ...

The potential role of CMV and the gut-brain axis in Alzheimer's disease
alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
open-access

A wonderful Christmas present from PLOS and the Gates Foundation!
We look forward to seeing how you will use this funding to help create a more equitable funding landscape.