The Vienna BioCenter
World-Class Science and Innovation Made in Austria
The Vienna BioCenter
PHOTO: VIENNA BIOCENTER
With migration to the United States becoming increasingly difficult even for students and scientists, it may be the right time to look for opportunities in the Old World. In Vienna, the dynamically growing Vienna BioCenter has become one of Europe’s premier hotbeds for life science research, education and business. It was a venture that seemed unlikely to succeed, but there was a vision and the times were right.
The year was 1985, and Max Birnstiel was already a world-famous biochemist and distinguished academic at the University of Zurich. After an international career, he could have prepared for settling in his native country; but when the companies Boehringer Ingelheim and Genentech approached him and offered the endowment of a molecular biology research institute, Birnstiel seized the opportunity. With unlimited freedom and the means to create a research heaven, he drew inspiration from the world’s leading institutions, recruited a faculty dream-team, and moved into a former radio factory in a disadvantaged corner of Vienna’s 3rd district. Fueled by the spirit of a start-up, the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) did not only rise to become one of Europe’s most eminent basic research institutes in the molecular life sciences, it also seeded what is now known as the Vienna BioCenter.
Fast forward to 2020. The Vienna BioCenter is now one of Europe’s most dynamic life science hubs. A staff of 1,860 from more than 80 countries ensure that this cluster for research, business, and education is buzzing with life. The IMP was joined by three more basic research institutes: the Max Perutz Labs of the University of Vienna and the Vienna Medical University, as well as the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology and the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, both of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. More than 90 research groups investigate fundamental phenomena of molecular biology here, the only working language across the institutes is English. Three universities – the aforementioned ones, as well as the University of Applied Sciences – foster talent for tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Thirty-four biotech companies have put Vienna on the map of internationally significant centers in the biomedical business. They range from local branches of international corporations to innovative start-ups, often spun out from the research institutes.
The Vienna BioCenter has a remarkably diverse mix of actors, bridging curiosity-driven research and applications. Evolving around its “heart, seed and flagship,” the IMP, it has transformed the face of St. Marx - once known for its slaughterhouses and industries; the neighborhood now has a modern feel, attracting many students, families and young professionals. The Vienna BioCenter is a campus that still carries the ideas of Max Birnstiel at its core, but it has long outgrown his initial vision.
It is not only the size of the campus that impresses, the Vienna BioCenter has also developed a brand for its academic rigor. Fifty-four of the highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) grants were awarded to researchers here since 2007, bringing millions of research funds to Vienna. Three people with ties to the Vienna BioCenter are laureates of the Breakthrough Prize, the world’s most generously endowed research award: Angelika Amon, laureate of 2019, was a doctoral student at the IMP in the early 1990s. She later moved to the U.S. and became Kathleen and Curtis Marble Professor in Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Sadly, Amon lost her personal battle against cancer on October 29, 2020. Her doctoral advisor, Kim Nasmyth, was among Birnstiel’s earliest recruits and his successor as IMP director – he received the Breakthrough Prize in 2018. Emmanuelle Charpentier was a group leader at the Max Perutz Labs, where she studied defense mechanisms of bacteria. Her discoveries lie at the foundation of the development of CRISPR/ Cas9, the “gene scissors” that have revolutionized molecular biology since 2011 and earned her a Breakthrough Prize in 2015.
The future for the Vienna BioCenter looks bright. Next year, four biology-related departments of the University of Vienna will move to a new building there, adding a further 500 staff and 3,000 students to the campus; a €146 million investment. A startup incubator that was founded last summer is filling with young and highly innovative companies. The campus has long reached the quality and critical mass to play en par with other leading life science centers. This is not last reflected by training opportunities: the competitive international Ph.D. program is complemented by a summer school and a postdoc training program. The fully funded opportunities are attracting young talent from around the world – and feed back into the global community of outstanding scientists.
Background Brief:
Life sciences in Vienna’s thriving academic scene
Vienna is Austria’s most important center of life science research and education. Five universities, two universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen), and eleven research institutes that are not affiliated with universities in Vienna are active in life sciences. They jointly employ 12,620 people in this field, representing 60 percent of the nationwide life science staff in academia. More than 34,700 students in life science subjects pursue their education in Vienna, more than in the entire rest of the country combined. Research outputs are internationally competitive: only a few weeks ago, Emmanuelle Charpentier was announced as a 2020 Nobel laureate in Chemistry in recognition of her contributions to developing the genome editing tool CRISPR/Cas9, the “gene scissors.”
Much of Charpentier’s underlying work was done while she had her lab at the Max Perutz Labs of the University of Vienna and Medical University Vienna between 2002 to 2009. Together with three other research institutes and 34 biotech companies, the Max Perutz Labs form the Vienna BioCenter (see main article).
Basic research is met by clinical applications through Austria’s world-class healthcare sector and a range of institutions supporting it. With its 26 university clinics, two clinical institutes, twelve theoretical medicine centers and numerous, highly specialized laboratories, the Medical University of Vienna is ranked among the leading medical research institutions of Europe.
On its premises, the university, together with the City of Vienna, operates Europe’s largest hospital, the Allgemeines Krankenhaus Wien (Vienna General Hospital). In order to ensure the highest standards in medical education, the new campus facility MedUni Campus Mariannengasse is scheduled for opening in 2025. Other strong actors in Vienna’s life science scene include the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), with a broad research portfolio including applied biotechnology; the University of Veterinary Sciences and associated research institutions; the Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; as well as private universities and hospitals.
Gargling and Innovative SARS-CoV-2 Detection Techniques:
Vienna BioCenter Basic Research is Realigned to Fight COVID-19
As in many workplaces, scientists at the Vienna BioCenter entered a phase of restricting research operations this spring. But while staff in the labs was reduced, a frenzy of activities sprung up among the researchers.
“Every single one of us started to wonder what we could do and how we could help to fight the pandemic,” says Johannes Zuber, a Senior Scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP). With more than 90 research groups operating, stateof- the-art infrastructure in place, and the combined expertise of hundreds of top scientists and technicians, the Vienna BioCenter is a natural breeding ground for innovative ideas – normally aimed at basic research. Could expertise and facilities be re-aligned to meet very applied problems?
Population monitoring is a major challenge, so the idea to develop and improve SARS-CoV-2 detection protocols was not far-fetched. Soon, a core-team of dedicated investigators formed and set out to follow various strategies. With a specialized Molecular Biology Service and highly qualified personnel, the research institutes were well equipped. Real-time qPCR - machines were available that can amplify and detect tiny amounts of virus-RNA. Early protocols from the Charité hospital in Berlin and from Hong- Kong University provided a starting point, but to establish highly sensitive and specific procedures for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers needed to tweak and refine many steps in the process. It helped that scientists at the University of Vienna and at the Vienna Medical University had come up with similar ideas. They quickly found each other and at the beginning of April, the Vienna COVID-19 Detection Initiative (VCDI) was founded as a collaborative, inter-institutional effort to combat the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
By that time, the major challenges in setting up a testing-pipeline based on the PCR-method seemed to be manageable. Additional hardware, though in great demand on the world-market, was on its way. Alternative suppliers for reagents and plasticware had been identified. To evaluate the method, volunteering employees would be screened. But it was clear that nasopharyngeal swabs taken by medical staff were not a feasible way to obtain samples.
“We sat down and wondered how else to get to where the virus enters our system - the back of the throat,” Johannes Zuber recalls. “Gargling was an obvious choice, and it had been done before.” A publication from Scotland (Bennet at al., 2017) had tested almost 7,000 people with viral infections and delivered promising results. After adapting and optimizing a throat wash procedure for SARS-CoV-2 detection, Zuber and his colleagues teamed up with clinical researchers around Manuela Födinger of the Wiener Gesundheitsverbund to validate the protocol side-by-side with nasopharyngeal swabs in COVID-19 patients and healthy controls. The results were so convincing that self-sampling with a gargling solution became the method of choice.
Starting in April, employees of research institutions at the Vienna BioCenter (IMP, IMBA, GMI, and VBCF) anonymously volunteered to participate in detection screens. Sampling by gargling rather than nasal swabs quickly moved from the Vienna BioCenter labs to become a public health tool. Starting in late summer, gargling became the method of choice at Vienna’s two drive-through testing sites. It is also used in a large testing-initiative for schools in Vienna, after a pilot study showed that even young students can master the task. Analyzing samples by RT-qPCR still requires expensive infrastructure and trained personnel. That is why other teams worked on alternative methods for detecting SARS-CoV-2. Andrea Pauli (IMP) and Julius Brennecke (IMBA) developed a technique that is based on a technology called RT-LAMP. It requires only a heating device and delivers results as a simple color change. Cheap, fast, and easy to handle, this method could be a game-changer for routine screenings in developing countries (Kellner et al., bioRxiv preprint).
Meanwhile, Luisa Cochella (IMP) and Uli Elling (IMBA) built on their expertise in next generation sequencing (NGS) to establish a fully automated testing-procedure that can be scaled up by several orders of magnitude. With the necessary logistics in place, it can handle up to 36,000 patient samples at a time. What is more, this method can be used to detect a handful of other viruses at the same time.
All three methods have been proven to be highly specific and sensitive. Each of them could cater to specific requirements, from monitoring in lowtech environments to SARS-CoV-2 detection in very large populations. By now, all three approaches have entered a stage where they can be adopted by health agencies or companies to serve a wider public.
More information:
Vienna BioCenter: https://www.viennabiocenter.org/