Prize-winning SARS-CoV-2 research
Nora Schmidt receives the Postdoctoral Award for Virology from the Robert Koch Foundation
For her outstanding contributions to the field of virology, the Robert Koch Foundation has honored Nora Schmidt with its Postdoctoral Award. The foundation recognizes her research on the interactions between different SARS-CoV-2 RNAs and proteins of the human host cell. She conducted this work as a postdoctoral researcher in Mathias Munschauer’s group at the Helmholtz Institute Würzburg. The award, which includes a monetary prize of 5,000 euros, will be presented on November 8 in Berlin.
How SARS-CoV-2 initiates its replication process during infection has long been poorly understood. However, in a study published in October 2023 in the journal Cell, a research team led by Munschauer demonstrated for the first time the role of the human protein SND1 in this process. SND1 works together with the viral protein NSP9 to stimulate the virus’s genetic replication program in infected cells. The scientists, including Nora Schmidt as one of the first authors, also discovered that NSP9 acts as the initial building block in the production of new viral genetic material. These findings are not only significant for further basic research but could also open new avenues for treating COVID-19 and other infectious diseases caused by coronaviruses.
The Award
In collaboration with the German Societies for Hygiene and Microbiology, Immunology, and Virology, the Robert Koch Foundation annually awards three Postdoctoral Awards for outstanding work to young researchers in these fields. In addition to Nora Schmidt, Lucie Loyal from the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and Matthias Gröschel, also from BIH and Charité Berlin, were awarded postdoctoral prizes in Immunology and in Hygiene and Microbiology, respectively.
