Heiner Wedemeyer is a Research Group Leader in the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology at Hannover Medical School. He studied Musicology and Medicine and graduated in Medicine at the University of Göttingen. From 1998-2000 he spent 2 1/2 years as a research fellow in immunology in the Liver Diseases Section at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, in the group of Barbara Rehermann. Since 2001 he is working as a senior physician in the Gastroenterology and Hepatology in the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology in Hannover (Director Prof. Dr. M.P. Manns). From 2001 on, he was leading a research group on T cell immunology and since 2004 he is also heading the hepatitis diagnostic laboratory.

Since 2002 he has been the scientific secretary of the German Network of Competence on Viral Hepatitis (Hep-Net) funded by the German Ministry for education and research. Heiner Wedemeyer headed the Task force on treatment of hepatitis B during the german consensus conference on the treatment of hepatitis B in 2007 and is currently leading the German consensus group on prophylaxis and treatment of acute hepatitis C virus infection. In 2008 he has been elected as a Scientific Comittee Member of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) and has been nominated to be EASL Vice-Secretary in January 2009.

Heiner Wedemeyer has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the European Union, the European Association for the study of the Liver and by the Network of Competence on Viral Hepatitis (Hep-Net). He is also has been member of a Grand Challenge project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Heiner Wedemeyer has worked on basic and clinical aspects of hepatitis virus infections since 1996. His main interest is the immunopathogenesis of HBV, HCV and HDV infection and the development of novel immunomodulatory therapies such as therapeutic vaccines in hepatitis C. Heiner Wedemeyer has been investigator in several phase I-IV clinical trials on antivirals and immunotherapies in viral hepatitis.