Manfred Weidmann

Background

About Manfred Weidmann

I have been developing rapid diagnostics for field settings at the point of care / point of need for more than 70 medical and veterinary pathogens during an academic career of 25 years. This included a mobile real time RT-PCR lab for outbreak investigation and a suitcase lab using isothermal real time RT-RPA successfully used by African teams in the Ebola outbreak of 2014/15. Since then a mobile suitcase lab network in 10 African South-Asian countries developed which ran several preclinical and phase 1 clinical studies for various pathogens. Beyond this I have worked with a variety of diagnostic techniques such as microarray and bead array systems, microfibre optic systems, and a centrifugation LabDisc for the detection of 10 infectious agents. For seven years I worked at the Institute of Aquaculture of the University of Stirling, built a network into the aquaculture industry, and focused on transferring my previous experience in virology, molecular epidemiology of viruses, and molecular field diagnostics to aquaculture research. Amongst other results I described the first detection of Tilapia Lake virus in Egypt after its discovery in Israel, and published evidence of the ongoing evolution of Infectious pancreatic necrosis virus in vaccinated IPNV tolerant farmed salmon in Scotland, and non-vaccinated trout in Iran and Turkey. I also succeeded in demonstrating that biomarker detection for a smoltification marker of salmon can deliver a basis for economically important seawater transfer decisions on the day of testing at the farm site. During the Covid pandemic I joined startup midge medical GmbH in Berlin as Head of Biochemistry Research, kicking off the creation of a consumer grade molecular home test for the detection of SARS CoV2 by RT-RPA, which was successfully CE-IVD registered in May 2022, barely two years after the project started. The low-cost home testing minoo device developed, is fully digitally integrated, allowing backend calculation of results and reporting to a phone App (https://doi.org/10.1007/s15010-024-02179-z) At midge I was introduced to agile development for design, development, verification and validation (ISO 13485) and was involved in the respective documentation. My academic and industry career, highlight my experiences and management skills in research, laboratory management, project management, budget administration, staff management and scientific reporting.