Univerza v Ljubljani

Univerza v Ljubljani (UL) is the central and largest educational institution in Slovenia. Established in 1919 it is an institution with a very rich tradition, today with 50.000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, taking over 300 different undergraduate and postgraduate study programmes.

The Laboratory for Zoonoses of the Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine is involved in the clinical diagnostics and research of zoonotic vector-borne diseases, mainly arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers. The laboratory serves as a national and international reference for hantaviruses, tick-borne encephalitis virus, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus and other viral hemorrhagic fever viruses. The Laboratory is responsible for BSL-3 laboratory operations, including glowbox, to conduct research on genetic variability of VHF viruses with a respect to their host-vector-human relationship.

Within EVIDENT Univerza v Lubljani will be involved in WP1 – collecting material in the field from survivals of EVD to assess kinetics of neutralizing antibody and T cell response. The laboratory has also experiences in studying immunological and virological correlates of the disease outcomes, thus will participate in WP2 – to measure soluble mediators of disease and inflammation; to provide knowledge on impact of co-infections for the disease outcome as well as to develop relevant differential diagnostics in the field.