COVID-19 taskforce: Launch of national platform, FNR Call in the making

Dr Guy Berchem (GB) is an oncologist and Director of Research at the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL), having also recently been appointed Associated Medical Director at LIH. As a “clinician scientist” with dual expertise in both research and healthcare, Dr Berchem is currently playing a crucial role in the setup of clinical studies on Covid-19 in Luxembourg, in close collaboration with the Clinical and Epidemiological Investigation Centre (CIEC) at LIH.

The Communication team at the Luxembourg Institute of Health is pleased to announce the launch of #LIHtellmewhy, an innovative initiative of catchy cartoons aiming to explain the COVID-19 situation to young children aged four to eight.

Since the first outbreak of the novel pneumonia (COVID-19) in Wuhan (China), a lot of conjectures have been formulated as to the origin of the causative virus, SARS-CoV-2, which is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans.

Research Luxembourg, a joint initiative of the main players in Luxembourg's public research sector, is mobilising its knowledge and its human and material resources to help address the challenge of COVID-19.

Postdoctoral fellows Amela Jusic, from the LIH Department of Population Health (DoPH), Marie Boudaud and Tomasz Uchanski, from the LIH Department of Infection and Immunity (DII), have been awarded financial support in the framework of the European Commission’s “Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships” funding scheme. The programme will back the scientists’ work on hypertension, receptor-chemokine interactions and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD).

The ‘Proteomics of Cellular Signaling’ research group of the LIH Quantitative Biology Unit, led by Prof Gunnar Dittmar, has teamed up with Bruker Daltonics, a leading international manufacturer of mass spectrometers, to develop new applications for targeted proteomics on their new flagship mass spectrometer ‘TimsTOF Pro’. The goal of this collaboration, which saw the endowment of one of Bruker’s novel mass spectrometers to the research group, is to develop new targeted techniques to improve the measurement of diagnostic biomarkers for cancer and other diseases.

On Tuesday, January 28th 2020, Dr Anna Golebiewska, Group Leader at the NORLUX Neuro-Oncology laboratory, and Dr Johannes Meiser, Group Leader of the Cancer Metabolism Group at LIH’s Department of Oncology, received the “Legs Kanning Prize” from the association “Action Lions Vaincre le Cancer”. The prize rewards the scientific achievement of researchers who devote their career to cancer research in Luxembourg.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) coordinates a global network of measles and rubella reference laboratories. For many years, LIH has been hosting the Luxembourg National Reference Laboratory for Measles and Rubella as well as a European Regional Reference Laboratory for Measles and Rubella. The laboratory has recently been successfully accredited again based on a thorough quality assessment by WHO representatives.