Paul-Ehrlich-Insitut (PEI)
Workpackage (WP) participation
Partner description
PEI is an institution that combines a research center and a biomedicine agency. Research activities at PEI focus on various areas of medicine and life science including quality, safety and efficacy of biomedicines. For gene therapeutic medicinal products (GTMP) PEI is the regulatory authority in Germany.
Prof. Ivics, the head of the Division of Medical Biotechnology, and his research group focused on the development of transposon-based vector systems for regenerative medicine and gene therapy. He pioneered genetic applications of transposons by reconstructing the first active vertebrate transposon, the Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon from fish. He has extensive experience and expertise in the utilisation of the SB transposon system. The transposon tools created in his laboratory opened novel possibilities in vertebrate genetics, including somatic gene therapy, generation of induced pluripotent stem cells and insertional mutagenesis in mammalian cells. Prof. Ivics laboratory has been the leader in the development of technologies applicable to target-selected gene insertion by transposon vectors and established an experimental pipeline for high throughput transposon insertion site mapping and bioinformatics analyses.
Main tasks attributed to the project
In the project TargetAMD Prof. Ivics refined the gene transfer vector system by targeting insertion into genomic safe harbours (WP2). PEI plays an essential role in deciding the architecture of the final vector construct as well as investigating and evaluating the safety aspects of the gene transfer system in vivo and in vitro (WP6). With his expertise Prof. Ivics supported the scientific management and coordination according the regulatory approval process (WP7, 8). Since Prof. Ivics is a member of the board of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ESGCT), member of a number of editorial boards and an invited speaker to major conferences in the field of gene therapy, he will also be play an essential role in the dissemination of information resulting from TargetAMD (WP10).
Contact
Prof. Zoltán Ivics
Zoltan.Ivics@pei.deProf. Ivics, PhD, Head of Division at the PEI, Langen, Germany (Institution of the Federal Republic of Germany, reporting to the federal ministry of Health), international expert in gene transfer technology, was trained in Hungary, the USA, the Netherlands and Germany. Prof. Ivics serves on several editorial boards such as “Journal of RNAi and Gene Silencing”, “Molecular Therapy”, “The Open Gene Therapy Journal”, “Mobile DNA and Mobile Genetic Elements”. He is member of the board of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ESGCT) and a member of the Vector Committee of the ESGCT. He is also an appointed reviewer for “Nature Genetics”, “Nature Methods”, “Nature Protocols”, “Molecular Cell”, “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”, “PLoS – Public Library of Science – Genetics” and others.
