Under difficult conditions: research in the Marburg high-security laboratory

Marburg. Your throat gets scratchy, your nose runs and you feel really miserable when your family doctor says: “You’ve caught a virus.” Almost everyone has probably heard this sentence before and also knows something about these microscopic pathogens. for example, that they enter the body via the respiratory tract or into the gastrointestinal tract through contaminated food, multiply in the body’s cells, cause diseases and can infect other people via exhaled air or excretions from the body.

Professor Stephan Becker’s work begins where the general knowledge of someone who is not familiar with medicine ends. Stephan Becker heads the Institute of Virology at the Philipps University of Marburg and he has been working with this type of pathogen for practically his entire professional life: viruses that can cause illness.

Research on behalf of the WHO

What’s special about the research objects of Professor Becker’s team: They are “very dangerous viruses that we are taking care of on behalf of the WHO”. Ebola, Lassa and Marburg viruses are just a few of the names of the pathogens that, once broken out, spread fear and terror. In order to prevent uncontrolled spread, Professor Becker and his team find out how the viruses reproduce in order to develop an antidote – usually a vaccination.

That is not easy. Viruses are “simple packages” that are often made up of just a few molecules, but once they have penetrated a cell, they can “reprogram it to multiply its genome unaffected by the body’s natural defense mechanisms.” If this process continues, illness and further spread are inevitable.

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His research subjects are rare, but “if there is an outbreak, an epidemic, entire regions can be destabilized.” You could imagine this as being the case here at the time of the lockdowns during the corona pandemic. “Imports” of such highly pathogenic viruses to Europe have so far been very rare. It is the viruses, which mostly occur in Africa or Asia, that Becker primarily researches in the Lahnberge. He cites the MERS corona virus, SARS-CoV and the Ebola virus as examples.

Gather experience just in case

“There is actually no market” for the antidotes to these pathogens – too expensive to develop and the pharmaceutical industry’s earning potential is too low. That’s why it is financed by the public sector. Nevertheless, Professor Becker also sees further benefits in addition to vaccine development for poorer regions of the world. The Marburg institute is involved in international studies, advances research, develops new approaches, and gathers experience in order to be able to quickly produce a vaccine if necessary.

In collaboration with researchers in Munich and Hamburg, it was possible to develop a new platform for producing vaccines that allows for significantly shorter periods of time than the previous ten years. In 2009, the Marburg-based company Novartis also succeeded in producing a flu vaccine “within a very short time” and the Marburg institute was also involved in the creation of one of two Ebola vaccines. And during the corona pandemic, “a lot of diagnostics were also carried out for clinics in the region”.

All of this happens in addition to the theoretical work in the high-security laboratory (BSL 4) on the Lahnberge. There are currently four laboratory spaces there and two more where we work with animals. The employees work there under difficult conditions because dealing with highly dangerous viruses requires an extreme level of safety.

Work under the highest safety conditions

Working in a full protective suit with an air supply like a diver who gets fresh air from outside via a hose; At the safety workbenches, from which no air can escape, the already double-gloved hands must be inserted into another pair of gloves. “That makes work awkward and makes work more difficult,” says Stephan Becker.

He did this himself for 15 years and therefore knows how his young employees feel: “You approach working with highly dangerous viruses with a lot of respect because you are very close to them yourself. It’s very mentally exhausting.” But the interaction of science and technology is also what makes the job so attractive and, of course, the knowledge that you’re doing something for the benefit of humanity.

This happens with maximum possible use of time. The workstations in BSL4 are currently used for ten hours every day. “In outbreak situations, we reach the limits of our capacity,” says Professor Becker and is pleased that construction on the new, additional BSL4 will soon begin. This new high-security laboratory will also contain everything that is currently possible in terms of safety.

It starts with the design, which is similar to that of a thermos bottle. “It will be a house with two shells, practically two houses built one on top of the other.” This means that the upper building hermetically shields the inner one from the outside world in case viruses should escape from the inner laboratory by chance or an accident. Furthermore, ventilation systems constantly circulate the room air; two filters connected in series ensure that no virus-sized particles can escape to the outside.

“We do everything we can to achieve the highest possible level of security,” says Becker. The new high-security laboratory, which will be located in the immediate vicinity of the current one, will enable “we to further expand our expertise in dealing with highly pathogenic viruses in Marburg”.

OP