Third clinical junior research group at TWINCORE

Since May 2024, the Institute for Molecular Bacteriology has also had a clinical junior research group. Microbiologist Dr Leonard Knegendorf has taken up a position as a physician scientist and will be investigating what additional insights can be gained from the data collected in clinical diagnostics and how diagnostics can be improved through more precise characterisation of bacteria using whole genome sequencing.

The special thing about this is that it does not require any additional diagnostic tests. ‘The analyses carried out in the clinic are intended to help group the genome data and thus provide new information for optimal treatment. But we can learn even more from the data,’ says Knegendorf. ‘Whether and how we can derive prognoses or risk assessments from the findings is one of the questions that interests me the most.’

Knegendorf is in the final year of his residency in microbiology, virology and infection epidemiology, which he is currently completing at the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hospital Hygiene at the MHH under the supervision of Prof Dirk Schlüter. ‘I'm delighted that I can now take on this interface function between research and the clinic,’ says Knegendorf. ‘In the future, I would like to bring questions from diagnostics into research, but also advise clinical colleagues with the newly acquired knowledge.’

Dr Leonard Knegendorf is the third Junior Clinician Scientist at TWINCORE. Dr Theresa Graalmann has headed the clinical junior research group ‘Translational Immunology’ at the Institute for Experimental Infection Research since 2021. Dr Patrick Behrendt founded his ‘Translational Virology’ group at the Institute for Experimental Virology back in 2019.