Research Focus
The focus of the Krammer laboratory within the Semmelweis Institute is on RNA viruses, especially influenza viruses, coronaviruses and hantaviruses but also other emerging viruses. We are interested in understanding pathogenicity of these viruses, their potential for human-to-human transmission (a pre-requisite for a pandemic), as well as immune responses that protect us from these infections and how prevalent protective immunity in the human population is. We are especially interested in humoral immune responses to the surface glycoproteins of these viruses, their antiviral potential and their antiviral mechanisms. Furthermore, we are studying mucosal immunity and how it can block transmission of respiratory viruses. Based on these findings, we are developing vaccines candidates and therapeutics which can help to prevent or treat these infections.
Biography
Florian Krammer
Florian Krammer, PhD, graduated from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.
He received his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese at the Icahn School of Medicine
at Mount Sinai, New York, working on hemagglutinin stalk-based immunity and universal influenza virus vaccines. In 2014, he became an independent principal investigator and is currently the endowed Mount Sinai Professor of Vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is also the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness (C-VaRPP). Furthermore, since 2024, Dr. Krammer is Professor for Infection Medicine at the Ignaz Semmelweis Institute at the Medical University of Vienna. Dr. Krammer’s work focuses on understanding the mechanisms of interactions between antibodies and viral surface glycoproteins and on translating this work into novel, broadly protective vaccines and therapeutics. The main target is influenza virus but he is also working on coronaviruses, flaviviruses, hantaviruses, filoviruses and arenaviruses. He has published more than 400 papers on these topics.
Dr. Krammer is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Henry Kunkel Society,
he is on the Board of Directors of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI) and he serves as one of the chairs of the SAVE group which tracks SARS-CoV-2 variants for the US NIH. He is also the recipient of the 2024 Geoffrey Schild Award.