Speaker

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Prof. Protzer is an expert virologist with many years of research in molecular virology, virus-host interaction and immunology. Prof. Protzer studied medicine in Germany, South Africa and Switzerland. She has a strong background in infectious diseases, hepatology and medical virology obtained during her clinical training, and has passed board exams in Internal Medicine as well as in Microbiology and Virology.
Since 2007, Prof. Protzer is director of the Institutes of Virology at Helmholtz Munich and at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and holds the Chair of Virology. Focusing on the promotion of young scientists, she serves as vice dean of the School of Medicine. 2011-2018 she was member of the founding executive board of the German Center for Infection Research. Currently, she is leading several national and international research consortia and serves in numerous advisory and supervisory boards. 
Her scientific efforts focus on understanding the interaction between viruses and their human hosts and on translating this knowledge into novel therapeutic approaches. Hereby, she focusses on the hepatitis B virus killing >880.000 humans every year and most recently on the new SARS-Coronavirus. Her group is exploiting vaccines and immune therapies to reconstitute HBV-specific immunity and finally cure HBV, and performs a number of clinical studies on the effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccines.