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Roman Woelfel

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German physician, virologist and Bundeswehr colonel
Roman Woelfel
Roman Wölfel (2022)
Born (1974-03-03) March 3, 1974 (age 50)
Alma materPhilipps University of Marburg
Scientific career
FieldsVirology
InstitutionsTechnical University of Munich

Roman Wölfel (born on March 3, 1974. in Frankfurt am Main) is a German physician and medical officer in the rank of Colonel (OF-5) in the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr). Since October 2019, he is the director of the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology (IMB, German: Institut für Mikrobiologie der Bundeswehr) in Munich and since 2021 a professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Life and Military Career

Education and first assignments

In 1993, Roman Wölfel joined the German Armed Forces as a medical officer candidate at the German Air Force Medical School in Giebelstadt. He completed the medical officer training and pursued his studies in Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the Philipps University of Marburg. He graduated in 2000 from the Justus Liebig University Giessen and served as a resident at the Bundeswehr Hospital Hamburg. In the same year, Wölfel obtained his medical doctorate. From 2002 to 2003, he served as a battalion surgeon and squadron leader in the Air Force Medical Squadron of 26th Air defense missile group in Husum, Northern Germany.

Service as Staff Officer

From 2003, Wölfel worked as a research associate at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology followed by training in the BSL-4 high-containment laboratory of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg and a research stay at the Institute for Microbiology, Immunology, and Hygiene of the Technical University of Munich. Since 2007, he is a consultant medical microbiologist and virologist.

From 2008 to 2014, Wölfel led the Department of Medical Biological Reconnaissance and Verification at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology. This involved establishing mobile laboratory capabilities for investigating dangerous infectious diseases. In 2013, these capabilities were deployed as the first international WHO team in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

After serving as the head of Bacteriology & Toxinology at the Institute for Microbiology of the Bundeswehr, he moved from 2016 to 2019 as the head of the Operations Management and Operations Concept Department and head of the CBRN Medical Task Force to the Bundeswehr Medical Academy.

Since 2019, he has been the director of the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology and was appointed as an adjunct professor at the Technical University of Munich, School of Medicine and Health in 2021.

Wölfel is an advisor to the German Ministry of Defense for the implementation and further development of the Biological Weapons Convention. He is also a member of the Health-Security Interface Technical Advisory Group (HSI-TAG) of the World Health Organization.

Medical specializations

Wölfel holds the following medical specialties and additional qualifications: Medical Specialist in Microbiology, Virology, and Infection Epidemiology, Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, Additional Qualification: Medical Quality Management, Military Emergency Physician.

International Deployments

  • 2002/2003: Emergency physician in the MedEvac Company in the German Contingent SFOR, Field Camp Rajlovac and FOB Filipovići near Foča.

Awards

Research

Wölfel's research and research groups focus on Emerging and Re-Emerging Viruses (e.g., Ebola Virus, Lassa virus, or Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus). Additionally, they investigate rare bacterial infections (Typhus, and other Rickettsiae). A focus lies on the development of molecular biological detection and identification formats and rapidly deployable laboratory equipment for field use. Research groups led by Wölfel conduct training and support projects in countries such as Georgia, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. In 2015, Wölfel completed his habilitation in microbiology, virology, and infection epidemiology at the University of Leipzig with the thesis "Molecular Biological Investigations on the Detection of Biological Warfare Agents".

Mobile Field Laboratories

From 2007, Wölfel developed a modular and rapidly deployable mobile laboratory system for the German Armed Forces. It was designed for a swift response to sudden disease outbreaks and includes flexible configurations and innovative biosafety measures. The system utilizes a foldable glovebox with rigid polycarbonate walls to ensure a safe working environment when handling highly infectious samples. It employs various diagnostic technologies such as qPCR, ELISA, and NGS, aiming for rapid turnaround times for sample analysis. With minimal infrastructure requirements, the system can be rapidly deployed worldwide and used in various environments. After initial deployments in the Balkans, the mobile laboratory was integrated into the European Mobile Lab Project (EMLab) from 2013. Several of these systems were deployed during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and are now considered a global technical standard for diagnostic field operations in combating disease outbreaks.

COVID-19 Pandemic

A research group led by Wölfel diagnosed the first cases of illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Germany on January 27, 2020, in the laboratory. The cases were among employees of the company Webasto. Wölfel's group succeeded in culturing the virus in cell cultures. Outside of China, this had previously only been achieved by Australian researchers. The research group also sequenced the genome of SARS-CoV-2, which was previously only partially known from Chinese online transmissions. In the publication of the research results, Wölfel, along with Christian Drosten, first described the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in the nasal and throat cavity and the excretion of the virus in the stool.

Mpox

During the largest outbreak of mpox in Europe to date, on May 19, 2022, the first German case of mpox was confirmed by one of Wölfel's research groups. The mpox virus was diagnosed in a patient with characteristic skin lesions using PCR and cell culture. Mpox virus was detected in blood and, for the first time, in semen

Publications

Scholia has a profile for Roman Wölfel (Q29460655).

References

  1. Official Curriculum Vitae (PDF), retrieved 2023-09-21
  2. ^ Deutscher Ärzteverlag GmbH, Editorial Team Deutsches Ärzteblatt (2019-12-13), Duties and Positions, retrieved 2023-11-06
  3. Roman Wölfel (2000), The Role of Inward-Rectifying Potassium Channels in the Regulation of Coronary Blood Flow, retrieved 2023-11-06
  4. Flugabwehrraketengruppe 26, retrieved 2023-10-24
  5. Wölfel_Roman, retrieved 2023-11-06
  6. "No evidence of biological weapons in Ukraine – DW – 05/03/2022". dw.com. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  7. "Health-Security Interface Technical Advisory Group (HSI-TAG)". www.who.int. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  8. "The Bundeswehr Foreign Duty Medal". www.bundeswehr.de. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  9. Wölfel, Roman; Paweska, Janusz T.; Petersen, Nadine; Grobbelaar, Antoinette A.; Leman, Patricia A.; Hewson, Roger; Georges-Courbot, Marie-Claude; Papa, Anna; Günther, Stephan; Park, Sung Sup (2007). "Virus Detection and Monitoring of Viral Load in Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus Patients". Emerging Infectious Diseases. 13 (7): 1097–1100. doi:10.3201/eid1307.070068. PMC 2878241. PMID 18214191.
  10. Gerhard Dobler, Roman Wölfel (2009-05-15), "Typhus and Other Rickettsioses", Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, 106 (20): 348–354, doi:10.3238/arztebl.2009.0348, PMC 2689634, PMID 19547738
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  12. InstMikroBioBw: Overview, retrieved 2022-11-06
  13. Completed Habilitations 2015 Medical Faculty University Leipzig (PDF), retrieved 2023-11-06
  14. Wölfel, Roman; Stoecker, Kilian; Fleischmann, Erna; Gramsamer, Brigitte; Wagner, Matthias; Molkenthin, Peter; Di Caro, Antonino; Günther, Stephan; Ibrahim, Sofi; Genzel, Gelimer H; Ozin-Hofsäss, Amanda J; Formenty, Pierre; Zöller, Lothar (2015-11-05). "Mobile diagnostics in outbreak response, not only for Ebola: a blueprint for a modular and robust field laboratory". Eurosurveillance. 20 (44). doi:10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2015.20.44.30055. ISSN 1560-7917. PMID 26559006.
  15. "Roman Woelfel Stock-Fotos und Bilder - Getty Images". www.gettyimages.de. Retrieved 2023-12-04.
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  17. Roman Wölfel, Ilona Mossbrugger (June 2010), Federal Ministry of Defence, Subdivision Rü IV (ed.), "Rapidly Deployable Biological Agent Laboratory (Biolab) – Microbiological High-Tech Diagnostics for Operations Abroad", 2009 Annual Military Scientific Research Report, Bonn, pp. 68–69
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  19. Muna Affara, Hakim Idris Lagu, Emmanuel Achol, Richard Karamagi, Neema Omari, Grace Ochido, Eric Kezakarayagwa, Francine Kabatesi, Anatole Nkeshimana, Abdi Roba, Millicent Nyakio Ndia, Mamo U. Abudo, Alice Kabanda, Etienne Mpabuka, Emil Ivan Mwikarago, Philip Ezekiel Kutjok, Donald Duku Samson, Lul Lojok Deng, Nyambura Moremi, Maria Ezekiely Kelly, Peter Bernard Mtesigwa Mkama, Alex Magesa, Stephen Karabyo Balinandi, Godfrey Pimundu, Susan Ndidde Nabadda, Dewi Ismajani Puradiredja, Julia Hinzmann, Sophie Duraffour, Martin Gabriel, Gerd Ruge, Wibke Loag, Rogers Ayiko, Stanley Serser Sonoiya, Juergen May, Michael J. Katende, Florian Gehre (2021-07-09), "The East African Community (EAC) mobile laboratory networks in Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Sudan—from project implementation to outbreak response against Dengue, Ebola, COVID-19, and epidemic-prone diseases", BMC Medicine, 19 (1): 160, doi:10.1186/s12916-021-02028-y, PMC 8266482, PMID 34238298{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. Guidance for rapid response mobile laboratory (RRML) classification, retrieved 2023-11-06
  21. Camilla Rothe, Mirjam Schunk, Peter Sothmann, Gisela Bretzel, Guenter Froeschl, Claudia Wallrauch, Thorbjörn Zimmer, Verena Thiel, Christian Janke, Wolfgang Guggemos, Michael Seilmaier, Christian Drosten, Patrick Vollmar, Katrin Zwirglmaier, Sabine Zange, Roman Wölfel, Michael Hoelscher (2020-03-05), "Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany", New England Journal of Medicine, 382 (10): 970–971, doi:10.1056/NEJMc2001468, PMC 7120970, PMID 32003551{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. Böhmer, Merle M; Buchholz, Udo; Corman, Victor M; Hoch, Martin; Katz, Katharina; Marosevic, Durdica V; Böhm, Stefanie; Woudenberg, Tom; Ackermann, Nikolaus; Konrad, Regina; Eberle, Ute; Treis, Bianca; Dangel, Alexandra; Bengs, Katja; Fingerle, Volker (2020-08-01). "Investigation of a COVID-19 outbreak in Germany resulting from a single travel-associated primary case: a case series". The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 20 (8): 920–928. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30314-5. PMC 7228725. PMID 32422201.
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  24. The Doherty Institute (2020-01-29), Doherty Institute scientists first to grow and share 2019 novel coronavirus, retrieved 2022-04-04
  25. Virus name: hCoV-19/Germany/BY-ChVir-929/2020, Accession ID: EPI_ISL_406862, 2020-01-28, doi:10.55876/gis8.231108kd, retrieved 2021-05-12
  26. Roman Wölfel, Victor M. Corman, Wolfgang Guggemos, Michael Seilmaier, Sabine Zange, Marcel A. Müller, Daniela Niemeyer, Terry C. Jones, Patrick Vollmar, Camilla Rothe, Michael Hoelscher, Tobias Bleicker, Sebastian Brünink, Julia Schneider, Rosina Ehmann, Katrin Zwirglmaier, Christian Drosten, Clemens Wendtner (2020-05-01), "Virological assessment of hospitalized patients with COVID-2019", Nature, 581 (7809): 465–469, Bibcode:2020Natur.581..465W, doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2196-x, PMID 32235945, S2CID 214771224{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  27. Institute for Microbiology of the Bundeswehr confirms monkeypox, 2022-05-20, retrieved 2023-11-08
  28. Monkeypox: Bundeswehr Institute confirms the first case in Germany - WELT, 2022-05-20, retrieved 2023-11-08
  29. Noe, Sebastian; Zange, Sabine; Seilmaier, Michael; Antwerpen, Markus H.; Fenzl, Thomas; Schneider, Jochen; Spinner, Christoph D.; Bugert, Joachim J.; Wendtner, Clemens-Martin; Wölfel, Roman (2023-02-01). "Clinical and virological features of first human monkeypox cases in Germany". Infection. 51 (1): 265–270. doi:10.1007/s15010-022-01874-z. ISSN 0300-8126. PMC 9272654. PMID 35816222.
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