Dr. Anja Germann (female) is group manager of the two working groups “Cellular Bioprocessing” and “Automation Processes” at Fraunhofer IBMT. She studied Biology at Saarland University. She performed her PhD study at the University of Heidelberg and at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and received her PhD in 2004. From 2004 – 2006, she worked in post-doctoral position at the Institute of Pathology at the University of Heidelberg. Since 2007, she is working at Fraunhofer IBMT, where she is responsible for is responsible for the global “HIV Specimen Cryorepository (HSC)” funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the government of Saarland. This biosafety level S3 cryobank for infectious samples and reagents serves also as cryorepository for a German-African network project for research in Staphylococcus aureus. She is active in the worldwide collection, processing, transport and cryopreservation of clinical samples as well as the development and optimization of improved cryotechnologies and cryoprocedures. She is the study director for the production of infectious molecular HIV-env clones (IMC) according to the quality assurance programs “Good Clinical laboratory Practice (GCLP)” and “DIN EN ISO9001:2015”, for the IMI project “European Bank for induced pluripotent Stem Cells (EBiSC1 and 2)” bank at IBMT certified according to “DIN EN ISO9001:2015” and for the preclinical laboratory (PKL) at IBMT. In this context, she is responsible for the implementation and execution of the quality assurance program “Good laboratory Practice (GLP)”. Another main expertise lies in development of cell-based assays. Since 2018, she is part of the working group “Clinical Stem Cell technology” and responsible for the cultivation of retinal pigment epithelium cells and the establishment of function assays. Concerning automation processes, she is involved in the transfer of virus production and cell-based assays from manual procedures to automated systems. Manual work sequences for the production and aliquoting of HIV-1 pseudotype viruses are being fully automated and validated up to certification under suitable quality management systems. Furthermore, cell-based tests such as neutralization and immune assays are being automated. She is author of 15 peer-reviewed publication.
