In 1993, Roman Wölfel joined the German Armed Forces as a medical officer candidate at the German Air Force Medical School in Giebelstadt. He completed the medical officer training and pursued his studies in Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the Philipps University of Marburg. He graduated in 2000 from the Justus Liebig University Giessen and served as a resident at the Bundeswehr Hospital Hamburg. In the same year, Wölfel obtained his medical doctorate.[3] From 2002 to 2003, he served as a battalion surgeon and squadron leader in the Air Force Medical Squadron of 26th Air defense missile group[4] in Husum, Northern Germany.
From 2008 to 2014, Wölfel led the Department of Medical Biological Reconnaissance and Verification at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology. This involved establishing mobile laboratory capabilities for investigating dangerous infectious diseases. In 2013, these capabilities were deployed as the first international WHO team in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
After serving as the head of Bacteriology & Toxinology at the Institute for Microbiology of the Bundeswehr, he moved from 2016 to 2019 as the head of the Operations Management and Operations Concept Department and head of the CBRN Medical Task Force to the Bundeswehr Medical Academy.
Wölfel's research and research groups focus on Emerging and Re-Emerging Viruses (e.g., Ebola Virus, Lassa virus, or Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus[9]). Additionally, they investigate rare bacterial infections (Typhus,[10] and other Rickettsiae). A focus lies on the development of molecular biological detection and identification formats and rapidly deployable laboratory equipment for field use. Research groups led by Wölfel conduct training and support projects in countries such as Georgia, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.[11][12] In 2015, Wölfel completed his habilitation in microbiology, virology, and infection epidemiology at the University of Leipzig with the thesis "Molecular Biological Investigations on the Detection of Biological Warfare Agents".[13]
Mobile Field Laboratories
From 2007, Wölfel developed a modular and rapidly deployable mobile laboratory system for the German Armed Forces. It was designed for a swift response to sudden disease outbreaks and includes flexible configurations and innovative biosafety measures.[14] The system utilizes a foldable glovebox[15] with rigid polycarbonate walls to ensure a safe working environment when handling highly infectious samples.[16] It employs various diagnostic technologies such as qPCR, ELISA, and NGS, aiming for rapid turnaround times for sample analysis. With minimal infrastructure requirements, the system can be rapidly deployed worldwide and used in various environments. After initial deployments in the Balkans,[17] the mobile laboratory was integrated into the European Mobile Lab Project (EMLab) from 2013.[18] Several of these systems were deployed during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa[19] and are now considered a global technical standard for diagnostic field operations in combating disease outbreaks.[20]
COVID-19 Pandemic
A research group led by Wölfel diagnosed the first cases of illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Germany on January 27, 2020, in the laboratory. The cases were among employees of the company Webasto.[21][22] Wölfel's group succeeded in culturing the virus in cell cultures.[23] Outside of China, this had previously only been achieved by Australian researchers.[24] The research group also sequenced the genome of SARS-CoV-2, which was previously only partially known from Chinese online transmissions.[25] In the publication of the research results, Wölfel, along with Christian Drosten, first described the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in the nasal and throat cavity and the excretion of the virus in the stool.[26]
Mpox
During the largest outbreak of mpox in Europe to date, on May 19, 2022, the first German case of mpox was confirmed by one of Wölfel's research groups.[27][28] The mpox virus was diagnosed in a patient with characteristic skin lesions using PCR and cell culture. Mpox virus was detected in blood and, for the first time, in semen[29]
^Muna Affara, Hakim Idris Lagu, Emmanuel Achol, Richard Karamagi, Neema Omari, Grace Ochido, Eric Kezakarayagwa, Francine Kabatesi, Anatole Nkeshimana, Abdi Roba, Millicent Nyakio Ndia, Mamo U. Abudo, Alice Kabanda, Etienne Mpabuka, Emil Ivan Mwikarago, Philip Ezekiel Kutjok, Donald Duku Samson, Lul Lojok Deng, Nyambura Moremi, Maria Ezekiely Kelly, Peter Bernard Mtesigwa Mkama, Alex Magesa, Stephen Karabyo Balinandi, Godfrey Pimundu, Susan Ndidde Nabadda, Dewi Ismajani Puradiredja, Julia Hinzmann, Sophie Duraffour, Martin Gabriel, Gerd Ruge, Wibke Loag, Rogers Ayiko, Stanley Serser Sonoiya, Juergen May, Michael J. Katende, Florian Gehre (2021-07-09), "The East African Community (EAC) mobile laboratory networks in Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Sudan—from project implementation to outbreak response against Dengue, Ebola, COVID-19, and epidemic-prone diseases", BMC Medicine, 19 (1): 160, doi:10.1186/s12916-021-02028-y, PMC8266482, PMID34238298{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Camilla Rothe, Mirjam Schunk, Peter Sothmann, Gisela Bretzel, Guenter Froeschl, Claudia Wallrauch, Thorbjörn Zimmer, Verena Thiel, Christian Janke, Wolfgang Guggemos, Michael Seilmaier, Christian Drosten, Patrick Vollmar, Katrin Zwirglmaier, Sabine Zange, Roman Wölfel, Michael Hoelscher (2020-03-05), "Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany", New England Journal of Medicine, 382 (10): 970–971, doi:10.1056/NEJMc2001468, PMC7120970, PMID32003551{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Roman Wölfel, Victor M. Corman, Wolfgang Guggemos, Michael Seilmaier, Sabine Zange, Marcel A. Müller, Daniela Niemeyer, Terry C. Jones, Patrick Vollmar, Camilla Rothe, Michael Hoelscher, Tobias Bleicker, Sebastian Brünink, Julia Schneider, Rosina Ehmann, Katrin Zwirglmaier, Christian Drosten, Clemens Wendtner (2020-05-01), "Virological assessment of hospitalized patients with COVID-2019", Nature, 581 (7809): 465–469, Bibcode:2020Natur.581..465W, doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2196-x, PMID32235945, S2CID214771224{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
