Ben Berkhout; Jochen Bodem; Otto Erlwein; Ottmar Herchenröder; Arifa S Khan; Andrew ML Lever; Dirk Lindemann; Maxine L Linial; Martin Löchelt; Myra O McClure; Carsten Scheller; Robin A Weiss

“ Subsequent to this, and in the light of emerging sequence data, the community agreed that the “viruses in search of a disease” [ [4] ] were “not so human after all”, but rather a variant of a chimpanzee foamy virus zoonotically transmitted to man as a dead-end infection [ [5] ] . Thereafter, Axel successfully campaigned to rename HFV the prototypic foamy virus (PFV) . Nevertheless, humans can be infected without apparent pathology by FVs following close contact with several non-human primate species [ [6] ] . ”

“ His work on HIV in Africa highlighted more newly infected HIV-patients with resistant virus [ [16] ] than had been estimated by the WHO. It is a pity that Axel’s excursion into the field of pathogenic retroviruses came so late in his career, although he had been seduced to working on other human pathogens in the course of more clinical studies (HIV-1, parvovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, norovirus, astrovirus, adenovirus, bocavirus, chikungunya virus) .
For many working under his guidance, Axel was a great mentor and a friend beyond their time in his laboratory. ”

“ He lived bravely with increasing physical infirmity, stubbornly trying to ignore its ravishing effects for as long as possible. By pointing out that the gene responsible for his impairment was dispensable in mice, he displayed his own brand of black humour. ”