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In the scientific session, there was a series of presentations on different topics of virology:
Emerging and Re-Emerging Viruses
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1. South African Mobile Laboratory Response to Ebola Outbreak in West Africa—Lessons Learned, by Prof. Janusz Tadeusz Paweska, Center for Emerging Zoonotic & Parasitic Diseases NICD-NHLS, South Africa. He presented the role of hunting bats and other wildlife for human consumption in Ebola transmission and the implementation of a mobile high biocontainment facility to conduct safe and secure molecular diagnosis of Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone.
2. MERS-CoV, an Emerging Virus from the Arabian Peninsula, by Prof. Ziad Memish, College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He outlined the history of the discovery and the current status of the MERS-CoV in the Middle East.
3. Interspecies Transmission of Bat Coronaviruses, by Prof. Zhengli Shi, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China. She talked about the diversity of coronaviruses and about bats as natural reservoirs of diverse coronaviruses as well as the capacity of some coronaviruses to jump species barriers.
4. Emerging Arboviruses in the Americas, by Prof. Laura D. Kramer, New York State Department Health and School of Public Health State University NY, USA. Her talk was about important factors driving arbovirus emergence and establishment.
5. Maintenance Mechanism of Dengue Viruses During the Inter-Epidemic Period, by Prof. Vinod Joshi, Institute of Virology and Immunology, Amity University, India. He talked about the role of eliminating infected larvae as an effective control measure and the radical roles of transovarian transmission of dengue virus in both urban and sylvatic cycles and how the virus is maintained in asymptomatic human cases.
6. Emerging SARS and MERS Coronaviruses: From Basic Research to Drug Discovery, by Prof. Deyin Guo from the School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, China. His talk was about RNA modification and an established high-throughput platform for screening inhibitors targeting coronavirus methyltransferases. His group also adopts gene-editing technologies.
Hepatitis Viruses and Human Immunodeficiency Viruses
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7. Molecular evolution of hepatitis viruses and HIV in Latin America, by Prof. Flor Pujol, Laboratorio de Virología Molecular, Centro de Microbiología y Biología Cellular Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Venezuela. This talk was about the types of relationship between viruses and indigenous populations.
8. Mucosal Factors of Importance for Susceptibility to HIV Infection, by Prof. Kristina Broliden. She demonstrated how the expression of epithelial junction proteins and HIV host cells are affected by injectable hormonal contraceptives.
9. Pathogenesis of Hepatitis C and Other Viruses: Molecular Basis and Animal Model Application, by Prof. Kyoko Tsukiyama-Kohara, Joint Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Kagoshima University, Japan. She talked about the role of ribonucleotide reductase M2 in promoting RNA replication of hepatitis C virus by protecting NS5B protein from hPLIC1-dependent proteasomal degradation. In addition, the use of Tupaia belangeri (tree shrew) as an animal model for HCV and HBV infections was discussed.
Agricultural, Environmental and Enteric Viruses
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10. Epidemiology and Clinical Impact of Emerging Human Parvoviruses, by Dr. Maria Söderlund-Venermo, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland. She described the epidemiology, global distribution and clinical presentation of different human protoparvoviruses, including bufavirus, tusavirus and cutavirus, as well as bocaparvoviruses.
11. Study, Detection, and Control of Foodborne Viruses, by Dr. Matthew D. Moore from the Department of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA. He described many projects with the ultimate goal of reducing foodborne virus burden, including the use of bacteria to capture and concentrate viruses, recombinase polymerase amplification, whole genome sequencing using nanopore sequencing, and utilization of a ligand-based nanopore technique for improved detection of foodborne viruses.
12. Development of Novel Viral Vaccines for Fish Aquaculture, by Prof. Vikram N. Vakharia, Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, University of Maryland, USA. He presented fundamental mechanisms of viral genetics and the design of VLP-based vaccines as well as virus vector vaccines. He also elaborated on protein expression in insect larvae as an effective and cheap method for protein expression.
13. Detection and Genotyping of Human Enteric Viruses in Clinical and Environmental Samples, by Prof. Jesus L. Romalde, CIBUS-Facultad de Biología, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He reported of the genetic diversity of human sapovirus in humans and different species of bivalve shellfish and the relation between acute gastroenteritis and consumption of bivalve mollusks.
14. Emergence and Evolution of New Enteric Viruses in Animals, by Prof. Yashpal S. Malik, Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, India. He described the molecular evolution of rotavirus A and C as well as picobirnaviruses in animals in India.
Zoonotic Viruses
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15. Spillover: Jumping Viruses and the Risk of New Epidemic Diseases, by Dr. Sayeh Ezzikouri from Virology Unit, Pasteur Institute, Morocco. He talked about the emergence of new viral diseases by animal-to-human host switching and the patterns driving cross-species transmission.
16. Zoonosis Science Center (ZSC): A Multidisciplinary Platform for Zoonotic Research, by Prof. Åke Lundkvist, Uppsala University, Sweden. He elaborated on various studies of the epidemiology of potential zoonotic diseases, infection ecology and epidemiology in Uppsala.
Viruses Affecting the Nervous System
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17. Involvement of Persistent Viral Infections in the Development of Nervous System Diseases by Dr. Modra Murovska, Institute of Microbiology and Virology, Riga Stradiņš University, Latvia. She described the frequency and quantification of virus-specific sequences in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
18. Viral Causes of Acute Flaccid paralysis (AFP), by Dr. Begona Valdazo-Gonzalez, Virology Department, National Institute of Biological Controls and Standards (NIBSC), UK. She talked about the role of poliovirus, enteroviruses and neurotropic arboviruses, as well as rabies in induction of AFP.
In the session break, promotion videos for WSV were recorded in many different languages (WSV 2019).