Achim Hörauf

Professor Achim Hörauf is Full Professor of Microbiology and Parasitology and Director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology at Bonn University Medical Center. The Institute is the central Infectious Diseases lab of the Medical Center, processing more than 120,000 samples per year. After performing his MD in clinical immunology at the University of Erlangen from 1987 to 1989, he was a fellow of Medical Microbiology and Infection Epidemiology in Hamburg, where he received his habilitation in 1998. After heading the department of helminthology at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNI) in Hamburg, he was appointed in 2003 to full professorship (C4) at the University of Bonn and became Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology. Since 2013, he is coordinator of the BMBF funded German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) in Bonn-Cologne. Since May 2017, he is chairmen of the DNTDs Network against Neglected Tropical Diseases in Germany. He has also been active as official member of various WHO Expert Advisory Panels on NTDs (Filarial Infections). Professor Hörauf is internationally renowned for his work in Tropical Medicine, specifically, for pioneering new drug treatments for filariasis, one of the most prevalent NTDs. The new treatment exploits the symbiosis between the filarial nematodes and bacterial endosymbionts called Wolbachia, which are susceptible to some classes of antibiotics. The feasibility of delivering a safe macrofilaricidal drug based on this mode of action has sparked macrofilaricidal research programmes by the Gates Foundation and DNDi. Professor Hörauf has been collaborating with key European, US, African and Asian scientists on filariasis for more than 20 years, acting as PI on numerous clinical trials funded by the BMBF, EU, the Volkswagen Foundation, and several grants from the Gates Foundation.