First contact regarding invasive fungal infections

Appointed by the Robert-Koch-Institute and the Federal Ministry of Health, the National Reference Center for Invasive Fungal Infections (NRZMyk) is the point of contact for physicians and microbiologists who have questions concerning the diagnosis of invasive fungal infections. It provides advice to all aspects of invasive fungal infections for physicians all over Germany and conducts special diagnostic methods to analyse certain fungal infections. Thereby, it cooperates with different reference centres worldwide. Since January 2014, the NRZMyk has been located at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology – Hans Knöll Institute in Jena. Its key tasks include consultation in matters of diagnosis and therapy of invasive fungal infections, species identification using culture dependent and culture independent techniques and the genotypic and phenotypic resistance determination of human pathogenic fungi. The NRZMyk accesses the “Jena Microbial Resource Collection – JMRC” which supplies human pathogenic fungi for diagnostic inquiries. Furthermore, the NRZMyk cooperates with associated partners, e.g. the Institute for Medical Microbiology and the Laboratories of the Clinic of Dermatology at the University Hospital Jena as well as the Laboratories of Molecular Biology of the Medical Clinic II at the University Hospital Würzburg. These partners contribute their complementary expertise and have been long standing cooperation partners of the HKI and the leaders of the NRZMyk in different research projects.