Research Center Borstel

The Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Biomedical Research ranks among the top research institutes for Infection Biology in Pulmonary Medicine in Europe. It hosts the German National Reference Center (NRC) for Mycobacteria which is one of the leading diagnostic centres worldwide and one of the 26 WHO Supranational Reference Laboratories (SRL). Basic, translational and clinical research issues in tuberculosis (TB) are addressed by FZB scientists and clinicians from 10 different research divisions. Their sociopolitical and distinguished scientifc mission is to carry out comprehensive health and biomedical research in pneumology, focusing especially on "infectious diseases" and "asthma and allergies", ultimately making important contributions to the development of innovate and more effective therapeutic and preventive regimens in this area.

Main tasks

Project coordination, scientific aspects of software and technology development, NGS parameter definition for MTBC, evaluation of new bioinformatics and sequencing tools

Relevant publications

  • Comas, Iñaki and Chakravartti, Jaidip and Small, Peter M. and Galagan, James and Niemann, Stefan and Kremer, Kristin and Ernst, Joel D. and Gagneux, Sebastien Human T cell epitopes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are evolutionarily hyperconserved. Nat Genet 2010 42 (6) : 498--503. [pmid]
  • Niemann, Stefan and Köser, Claudio U. and Gagneux, Sebastien and Plinke, Claudia and Homolka, Susanne and Bignell, Helen and Carter, Richard J. and Cheetham, R Keira and Cox, Anthony and Gormley, Niall A. and Kokko-Gonzales, Paula and Murray, Lisa J. and Rigatti, Roberto and Smith, Vincent P. and Arends, Felix P M. and Cox, Helen S. and Smith, Geoff and Archer, John A C. Genomic diversity among drug sensitive and multidrug resistant isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with identical DNA fingerprints. PLoS One 2009 4 (10) : e7407. [pmid]
  • Weniger, Thomas and Krawczyk, Justina and Supply, Philip and Niemann, Stefan and Harmsen, Dag MIRU-VNTRplus: a web tool for polyphasic genotyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex bacteria. Nucleic Acids Res 2010 38 (Web Server issue) : W326--W331. [pmid]
  • Wirth, Thierry and Hildebrand, Falk and Allix-Béguec, Caroline and Wölbeling, Florian and Kubica, Tanja and Kremer, Kristin and van Soolingen, Dick and Rüsch-Gerdes, Sabine and Locht, Camille and Brisse, Sylvain and Meyer, Axel and Supply, Philip and Niemann, Stefan Origin, spread and demography of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. PLoS Pathog 2008 4 (9) : e1000160. [pmid]

Contact

Research Center Borstel Logo

Prof. Dr. Stefan Niemann
Head Molecular Mycobacteriology Group

National Reference Center for Mycobacteria
Forschungszentrum Borstel
Parkallee 18
23845 Borstel, Germany

Phone: 0049-4537-1887620
Fax: 0049-4537-1883110
Email
Website

Team

Stefan NiemannStefan Niemann