Cellular and Molecular Virology

Infections by tick- and mosquito- borne Flavivirus is a gigantic global health problem causing serious diseases in humans including Dengue fever, West Nile encephalitis and Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE). In the cellular and molecular virology group we focus primarily on improving the understanding of the flavivirus life cycle. By mapping and identifying interactions between viral proteins and the host cell, we aim to find suitable targets for the future development of antiviral drugs and to develop live attenuated flavivirus vaccines. To select suitable vaccine candidates, we use reverse genetics technology to create mutated live attenuated viruses which we characterize in vitro and in vivo.

We also study viral replication using flavivirus replicon models which we can package in cell culture by co-expressing the structural proteins in our virus like particle system. To understand the spread and increased establishment of TBE in Scandinavia we aim to detect the TBE virus in nature and in patient samples. To further study the molecular epidemiology of TBE we characterize the genomes of sampled viruses using deep sequencing technique and bioinformatics.