In June 2012 the 9th International Symposium on Marek’s Disease and Avian Herpesviruses took place at the Freie Universität Berlin, and the 1st Lohmann & K.A. Schat Scientific Award, aiming to recognize excellent performance by young researchers in the field of MDV, was presented.
The first price was awarded to Julia Schermuly from the Institute for Animal Physiology of the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, for her development of a new method to infect B cell cultures to previously unattained percentages allowing examining in detail molecular events inside these cells after infection with MDV. This approach might be useful to investigate future vaccine candidates. The second price went to Annachiara Greco from the Institute of Virology of the FU Berlin. Greco is working on the mode of operation of telomeric repeats in the genome of the virus, which play a role in tumor development.
