Virology & Mycology
Open Access
ISSN: 2161-0517
ISSN: 2161-0517
Henry Memczak, Marc Hovestadt, Bernhard Ay, Sandra Sanger, Jan Grzegorzewski, Matthias Konig, Thorsten Wolff and Frank F Bier
Stanford University, USA
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Virol Mycol
The only cost-effective protection against influenza is vaccination. Due to rapid mutation continuously new subtypes appear, what requires annual reimmunization. For a correct vaccination recommendation, the circulating influenza strains have to be detected promptly and exactly and characterized regarding their antigenic properties. Due to recurring incidents of vaccine mismatches, there is a great need to speed up the process chain from identifying the right vaccine strains to their administration. The monitoring of subtypes as part of this process chain is carried out by national reference laboratories within the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS). To this end, thousands of viruses from patient samples (e.g. throat smears) are isolated and analyzed each year. Currently this analysis involves complex and time-intensive (several weeks) animal experiments to produce specific hyperimmune sera in ferrets, which are necessary for the determination of the antigen profiles of circulating virus strains. These tests also bear difficulties in standardization and reproducibility, which restricts the significance of the results. To replace this test a peptide-based assay for influenza virus subtyping is developed. The differentiation of the viruses takes place by a set of specifically designed peptidic recognition molecules which interact differently with the different influenza virus subtypes. The differentiation of influenza subtypes is performed by pattern recognition guided by machine learning algorithms, without any animal experiments.
Recent Publications
1. Memczak, Henry & Lauster, Daniel & Kar, Parimal & Di Lella, Santiago & Volkmer, Rudolf & Knecht, Volker & Herrmann, Andreas & Ehrentreich-F�¶rster, Eva & Bier, Frank & F. M. St�¶cklein, Walter. (2016). Anti-Hemagglutinin Antibody Derived Lead Peptides for Inhibitors of Influenza Virus Binding. PLoS ONE. 11. 10.1371/journal.pone.0159074.
2. Memczak, Henry & St�¶cklein, W & Ehrentreich-F�¶rster, E & Lauster, Daniel & Bier, Frank & Herrmann, Andreas. (2014). Peptides for binding of influenza viruses and inhibition of influenza infections.
3. Hoppe, Sebastian & Memczak, Henry. (2015). Biomarkers: From Discovery to Commercialization. Biomarker Validation: Technological, Clinical and Commercial Aspects. 183-205. 10.1002/9783527680658.ch10.
4. Siemeling, Ulrich & Memczak, Henry & Bruhn, Clemens & Vogel, Florian & Tr�¤ger, Frank & E Baio, Joe & Weidner, Tobias. (2012). Zwitterionic dithiocarboxylates derived from N-heterocyclic carbenes: Coordination to gold surfaces. Dalton transactions (Cambridge, England : 2003). 41. 2986-94. 10.1039/c2dt11976e.
5. Hovest�¤dt, Marc & Memczak, Henry & Pleiner, Dennis & Zhang, Xin & Rappich, Joerg & Bier, Frank & F. M. St�¶cklein, Walter. (2014). Characterization of a new maleimido functionalization of gold for surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy. Journal of Molecular Recognition. 27. 10.1002/jmr.2396.
Henry Memczak studied nanotechnology at the University of Kassel, Germany and completed his PhD in biochemistry in 2014 at the University of Potsdam, Germany and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology, Germany. He has worked on the development of analytical biosensors for influenza detection and methods for peptide-based biointeraction analysis for several years, published several papers, holds two patents and co-founded the company qpa bioanalytics GmbH for the commercialization of novel peptide biochips. For his dedicated translational research he received several awards and scholarships.
E-mail: memczak@uni-potsdam.de