National Reference Centre for Staphylococci

Head:

Guido Werner

Deputy:

Franziska Layer-Nicolaou

Our main focus is the epidemiological surveillance of staphylococcal infections in hospitals and the community as well as of emerging and disseminating staphylococcal strains with special resistance and virulence traits.
The reference centre provides a typing service to support the analysis of nosocomial infections in a network of bacteriological laboratories at university hospitals, general hospitals, public health institutions and private diagnostic laboratories. Furthermore prospective infectiological studies are performed. The reference centre is involved in the further development of staphylococcal diagnostics and in the evaluation of new methods in this field.
Research topics include the clonal structure of staphylococcal populations with respect to antibiotic resistance and pathogenicity, the resistance mechanisms and genes as well as the further development of molecular typing technologies. The reference centre collaborates closely with reference laboratories for staphylococci in Europe, Australia, and with the CDC.