Team - Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam

About Us
The Academic Medical Center (AMC) is one of the most prominent medical centers in the Netherlands as well as one of the largest hospitals. The laboratory of experimental virology is a hospital and academic laboratory, involved in research on virus discovery, epidemiology and immunology of viruses, and in the development of diagnostic methods for these viruses. The team of Lia van der Hoek (LvdH) mainly focusses on human coronaviruses after discovering in 2004 human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63) and is at the forefront of research on this virus. The group published that, of all human coronaviruses, HCoV-NL63 infection occurs most frequent, the virus has spread worldwide, it is associated with respiratory disease and uses ACE2 as a receptor, a molecule known to protect for lung oedemas and impaired lung function during respiratory infections. The group has a virus culture system running to monitor neutralization of HCoV-NL63 by antibodies and a culture assay to monitor inhibition of replication by antivirals and factors involved in innate immunity. The group developed real time screening assays for diagnostic purposes, and started several international collaborations a.o. to study pathogenicity markers in the virus. The laboratory has biosafety labs up to level 3 and the team consists of PhD students, technicians and 1 senior scientist (LvdH)

Objectives
To understand the role of HCoV-NL63 in double infections with other respiratory viruses.

Description of work
The research at the AMC will focus on HCoV-NL63 specific antibodies. In cell culture the neutralizing capacity of these antibodies will be monitored, and the level of neutralizing antibodies in elderly will demonstrate whether reduced levels are involved in the increased susceptibility to HCoV-NL63 infection. Besides neutralizing activity the absolute titer of antibodies to HCoV-NL63 will be determined.

Our team