3D Infection models

At the Chair of Microbiology we work with human pathogens for which no animal reservoir is known or which only cause disease in humans such as Bordetella pertussis or Neisseria gonorrhoeae.
A limitation of studying virulence of these pathogens is the lack of a relevant infection model. The use of cell lines and animals therefore are highly artificial models, which often do not represent the situation within the human host. To overcome these limitations we have developed surrogate human infection models based on engineered three-dimensional (3D) human tissues.
Within these models the infection of human tissues and host-microbe interactions are investigated under close-to-natural conditions.

Research is performed within the framwork of the graduate school GRK2157: 3DInfect which integrates long-standing expertises in infectious diseases and 3D tissue models.