Prof. Dr. Melanie Brinkmann
Herpesviruses establish lifelong chronic infections. To achieve this, they counteract the host’s defense machinery on every single level and employ various sophisticated strategies. They hijack cellular proteins, they mimic them, they destroy them, or they simply make themselves invisible to the host’s guardians. By doing so, they often guide us the way to discover novel cellular mechanisms or signaling pathways. In my group, we are particularly interested in the innate immune response to herpesviral infections, with the goal to identify novel therapeutic approaches to treat or even prevent herpesvirus-caused diseases.