Agenda

Wolfram Brune is a Professor at the Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology (HPI) in Hamburg. He received his MD degree from the University of Heidelberg Medical School in 1995. After his internship in pediatric neurology, he trained as a postdoc at the University of Munich (with Ulrich Koszinowski) and as a visiting research fellow at Princeton University (with Tom Shenk). In 2002, he became an independent Junior Group Leader at the Rudolf Virchow Center for Experimental Biomedicine, University of Würzburg, supported by an Emmy Noether career development grant. For his work, he received the Robert Koch Postdoctoral Award in 2003. From 2005 to 2010, he was head of the Divison of Viral Infections at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. He joined the HPI in Hamburg in 2010 as head of the Research Department Virus-Host Interaction. Since 2015, he serves as the Deputy Scientific Director of the HPI. His laboratory uses forward and reverse genetics to study cytomegalovirus-host interaction and cytomegalovirus pathogenesis with a focus on viral subversion of programmed cell death, autophagy, and innate antiviral defenses. His lab also investigates the molecular basis of the cytomegalovirus host species specificity.

Mei-Ru Chen is a professor at Department and Graduate Institute of Microbiology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University (NTU). She became interested in Microbiology during her study for the bachelor degree of Medical Technology in Taipei Medical University. In 1991, she received her PhD degree from NTU for the Cloning and Characterization of EBV DNase. Her postdoctoral training with Dr. Diane Hayward at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins focused on the molecular biology of EBNA-1. She established her own laboratory at Department of Microbiology in 1994 with an interest on EBV DNA replication machinery and protein kinase BGLF4. With the continuous funding support from National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) Taiwan, her lab then extended the research to the cell biology during EBV infection and the interplay between viral and cellular machineries. Her laboratory is aimed to reveal how lyltic genes and repetitive reactivation of EBV is associated with multiple neoplastic diseases.

Prof Santo Landolfo is a Full Professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology at the Department of Public Health and Pediatric Sciences of the University of Turin, Italy. He has gained a considerable amount of expertise in the field of intrinsic innate immunity against viral infections. In particular, the PI's laboratory (www.viplab.unito.it) has concentrated on defining the etiopathogenic role of the IFN-inducible PYHIN proteins, mainly the IFI16 protein, in the restriction activity against Herpesvirus infections. The PI’s group is highly productive, providing a scientific environment of excellence that is also fortified by the establishment of collaborations with other outstanding international research groups. His lab is currently composed of more than 15 members, including 2 Associate Professors, 1 Assistant Professor, 1 Technician, 1 Post-doc, 2 Ph.D. students, and graduate students. Santo Landolfo has published more than 200 articles in major scientific journals including Nature communication, Science, Lancet, mBIO, and Plos Pathogens. He has been regularly participating in grant review panels for the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) and other organizations. He has been frequently serving as a reviewer in peer-reviewed journals. In 2017, he set up NoToVir( www.notovir.com) a biotech Start-up, active in the field of medical biotechnology, whose mission is the screening of innovative antiviral molecules for the production of new pharmacological principles against viral infections.

Paul Griffiths is Emeritus Professor of Virology at University College, London. His research concerns cytomegalovirus infection, where he has helped to define the natural history and pathogenesis of this infection and used this information to design randomised controlled trials of antiviral drugs and prototype vaccines. He is Editor-In-Chief of Reviews in Medical Virology.

Jeffrey Cohen is chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH in Bethesda, MD. He received his MD from Johns Hopkins, was a resident in internal medicine at Duke, and a clinical fellow in infectious diseases at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is an associate editor for Fields Virology. His laboratory works on vaccine development for EBV and HSV, as well as development of monoclonal antibodies for EBV. He performs vaccine trials at the NIH Clinical Center and evaluates and treats patients with severe herpesvirus diseases to better understand the role of cellular immunity and human genetics in controlling viral infections.

Laurie T. Krug is a Stadtman Investigator at the National Cancer Institute. She trained with Philip Pellett on mechanisms of human herpesvirus 7 replication as a graduate student at Emory University and then completed her post-doctoral training with Margaret Offermann and Samuel Speck on viral and host determinants of gammaherpesvirus pathogenesis. She was as Associate Professor at Stony Brook University and moved her lab to the National Cancer Institute in 2019. Her lab seeks to define the gammaherpesvirus proteins and host signaling networks that are required for different stages of chronic infection using animal models of infection. Recent findings from her lab indicate that targeting host transcription factors decreases the virus load in B lymphocytes, a critical reservoir of viral latency. Her lab also discovered vital functions for viral proteins during murine gammaherpesvirus 68 infection of mice that were deemed dispensable in cell culture systems. Mechanistic studies of the virus-host interplay are underway with the goal to identify new, effective interventions to treat and prevent cancers driven by Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus and Epstein-Barr virus.

Dr. Eva Gottwein is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology-Immunology at Northwestern University-Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Dr. Gottwein studied biology at Konstanz University, Germany, before completing a Master’s degree at SUNY Stony Brook, NY, as an international exchange student. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg, where she studied retroviral assembly and budding under the guidance of Dr. Hans-Georg Krausslich. Dr. Gottwein began working on Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated herpesvirus and viral microRNAs as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Bryan Cullen at Duke University Medical Center. In her independent laboratory, Dr. Gottwein continues to study KSHV, with ongoing projects on the roles of both viral and host gene products in KSHV-mediated oncogenic transformation.

Beate Sodeik obtained her Diploma in Biology with a thesis on autophagy in Amoeba proteus (1988, Bonn, Germany). As a DAAD Fellow, she then studied the interaction of human neutrophils with blood clots, and trained in immunology at Columbia University Medical School, New York, USA. In 1989, she moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany), and worked towards her PhD on the assembly of vaccinia virus. In 1993, she joined the group of Ari Helenius at Yale University (USA) as postdoctoral EMBO fellow and then staff scientist to establish novel cell biology and biochemistry approaches to investigate the early phase of herpes simplex virus infection. In 1997, she became lecturer at the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at Hannover Medical School, Germany, and established her own research team. After her "Habilitation" in Biochemistry, she was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2002 and to Full Professor in 2007 at the Institute of Virology at Hannover Medical School. Beate Sodeik holds also affiliations with the German Excellence Cluster RESIST and the German Center of Infection Research (DZIF) at Hannover Medical School, and currently serves her second term on the Study Section Virology of the German Research Foundation (DFG). She teaches virology, cell biology and biochemistry in the MSc and PhD programs of the Hannover Biomedical Research School.

Gill Elliott is currently Professor of Virology at the University of Surrey, UK, where her group studies the cell biology of HSV1 infection. She obtained her PhD in the molecular biology of mumps virus from Queen’s University Belfast, and after a postdoctoral position studying molecular aspects of HIV transcription in Oxford, she began her career in herpesvirus research at the University of Leeds. A move to Marie Curie Research Institute, allowed her to pursue her interests in herpesvirus tegument proteins and assembly, initially in the group of Peter O'Hare, and subsequently in her own group where she pioneered the use of fluorescently-tagged viruses to study virus trafficking. In 2007, she moved to Imperial College London as an MRC Senior Fellow, and then to her current position at the University of Surrey in 2013. Her research has focused on virus morphogenesis and spread, with a particular interest in how HSV utilises the cellular secretory pathway to direct the process of assembly, with the aim of identifying cellular molecules crucial to this process. More recently, work on the tegument protein VP22 has also led to new understanding of spatial and temporal control of RNA metabolism during infection. She is keen to develop human keratinocytes as a relevant model for HSV1 infection, and having established a number of tools for this purpose her group is now investigating a range of virus-host interactions in these cells.

Jens von Einem is a Professor at the Institute of Virology at the Ulm University Hospital. He obtained his PhD in Virology at the University of Greifswald for his research on herpesviruses at the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health. He continued his research on herpesvirus morphogenesis and pathogenesis as well as vaccine candidate development as a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University with Klaus Osterrieder. In 2006, he took over the position of young group leader at the Institute of Virology in Ulm, where he was appointed Assistant Professor in 2011. His lab has been instrumental in using advanced electron microscopy to study herpesvirus morphogenesis, focusing on human cytomegalovirus. His group is investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the assembly of infectious virus particles to identify critical steps that could serve as novel targets to limit herpesvirus dissemination.

Trine H. Mogensen obtained her Medical degree from Aarhus University (AU) in 2002, a PhD degree in 2003, and a Doctor of Medical Sciences degree (DMSc) in 2009. International training includes studies in Biochemistry and in Medicine in Paris, Descartes University and Necker Medical Faculty, Research fellow in the laboratory of Professor Bryan Williams at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, and a Diploma from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 2014, she obtained her certificate as specialist doctor in infectious diseases. She became a professor in Infection Immunology at Department of Biomedicine, AU in 2017. Her current affiliations include Dept. of Biomedicine (AU) and Dept. of Infectious Diseases, Aarhus University Hospital, where she directs her research group and treats patients, respectively. Her clinical work and research focus on the genetic and immunological basis of primary immunodeficiencies and severe infectious diseases in humans, most notably viral infections in the central nervous system. Through a translational approach combining whole exome sequencing of patient samples with functional studies in molecular immunology and virology, her group aims at delineating the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, including herpes simplex encephalitis, recurrent HSV-2 meningitis, and VZV encephalitis with the ultimate goal to improve diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of these viral infections in the brain.

Neal DeLuca did his undergraduate studies at Lehigh University where he received a B.S. in Fundamental Sciences in 1977. He performed his graduate studies at The Pennsylvania State University and received M.S. and PhD degrees in Biophysics in 1979 and 1981, respectively. Dr. DeLuca went on to do postdoctoral research with Dr. Pricilla Schaffer at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School from 1982-1986. He stayed on as an Assistant Professor in Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Harvard Medical School, at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute from 1986-1991. In 1991 Dr. DeLuca moved to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where he is currently a Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. Dr. DeLuca has served as a member of the Virology and Virology A Study Sections, The NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, and the NIAID MID Study Section, as Chair. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Matthew Reeves currently leads a research laboratory based at the Institute of Immunity & Transplantation, UCL, UK where his lab investigates the molecular details of the host:pathogen interaction with a view to understanding pathogenesis in vivo and developing strategies to prevent it. His longstanding interest in HCMV concerns the biology of latency and, specifically, the importance of chromatin and cell signalling in dendritic cells as a driver of reactivation. Additionally, Matthew has investigated the role of cell death in both lytic and latent infection and developed an interest in gB through these studies. Recent work in the lab is centred on trying to understand the humoral immune response to the gB vaccine alongside trying to decipher key components of tissue resident immunity in transplanted organs.

Italo Tempera is an Associate Professor at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” where he studied the role of histone modifications in EBV infection. Upon completing his Ph.D., he continued his training in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Lieberman at The Wistar Institute, where he studied how the three-dimensional structure of the viral genome controls EBV gene expression during latency. In 2012, he started his independent laboratory at the Fels Institute for Cancer Research at Temple University. In 2020, he moved to the Wistar Institute, where his lab continues to study how EBV and host each attempt to alter the 3-dimensional structure and the composition of the other’s chromatin to achieve their own ends.

Päivi M Ojala Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland Päivi Ojala is the Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at University of Helsinki. Dr. Ojala holds a doctoral degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Helsinki, and has received postdoctoral training at the Yale School of Medicine, CT, USA. She has made significant contributions to the Kaposi’s Sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) field and her research also focuses also on the role of lymphatic endothelial microenvironment on cancer cell metastasis. She has expertise in organotypic 3D co-culture models, cell-based high-content screens, protein kinase signalling and viral technologies. Her work has led to demonstration of restoration of p53 function by small molecule inhibitors as a therapeutic modality for KSHV-induced lymphomas, identification of host cell Pim kinases, nucleophosmin and developmental transcription factors as novel regulators of viral replication and transcription, and shown that KSHV infection reprograms lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) to a new, more invasive cell type. They have also demonstrated that LEC interaction with melanoma cells leads to increased distant organ metastasis in vivo, which is dependent on MMP14, Notch3 and beta1-integrin. Currently they also develop novel CAR T cell therapies for solid cancers. Research focus: Virus- host interactions Endothelial tumor microenvironment Metastasis CAR T cell therapy Competing interests statement Päivi Ojala receives funding from the Sigrid Juselius Foundation, Finnish Cancer Foundations, and Finnish Red Cross Research Grants.

Benedikt Kaufer is a professor and the director of the Institute for Virology at the Freie Universität Berlin. He received his Bachelor of Science at the Technical University of Munich (2005) and his PhD at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Cornell University (2010). In 2010 he established his own laboratory at the Institute for Virology of the Freie Universität Berlin and was appointed as an assistant professor for “molecular tumor virology” in 2011. He is currently an endowed Lichtenberg professor funded by the Volkswagen foundation. The Kaufer laboratory investigates various aspects of herpesvirus biology including pathogenesis, latency, virus integration and virus-induced tumorigenesis. The team uncovered various mechanisms involved in Marek’s disease virus pathogenesis and lymphomagenesis, and discovered a mechanism that allows certain herpesviruses to integrate their genome into host telomeres during latency. For his work, he received a number of awards including the “Robert Koch Post-doctoral Award”, the “Young Investigator Award” of the German Veterinary Society (DVG) and the “Loeffler-Frosch-Award” of the German Society for Virology (GfV). His research has been funded by various agencies including the German Research Foundation (DFG), European Research council (ERC) and the NIH.

The overarching goal of his research is to understand cancers that develop in the context of immunodeficiency and HIV/AIDS. He obtained my Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1994 and completed postdoctoral training in Virology at Stanford University and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Since 2005 he has been on the faculty in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He currently serves as the team lead for Virology and Global Oncology at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and as director of UNC’s viral genomics (Vironomics) core. He is an elected fellow of the American Association of Microbiology (ASM) and served as chair of several NIH review panels. He serves on the editorial boards for the J. of Virology, Virology, PloS Pathogens and mSystems. In 2021 he won the Hyman L. Battle Distinguished Cancer Research Award. He has published 198 manuscripts (h = 60) and has received continuous NIH funding for the past 15 years. Broadly his research is divided into three themes. (a) The development of animal models for viral cancers. This includes studies on xenografts, humanized mice, and genetically engineered mouse models. (b) The development of targeted therapies against AIDS lymphoma. His group works both preclinically and participates in clinical trials of the AIDS malignancy consortium. (c)The study of viral miRNAs as they are transmitted through extracellular vesicles or exosomes. The Dittmer lab is committed to maintaining an inclusive and supportive research environment. As part of this commitment the group supports research training and infrastructure development in low and middle-income countries worldwide.

Dr Lori Frappier received her Ph.D. from McGill University in the field of human DNA replication, followed by postdoctoral studies with Mike O’Donnell at Cornell University Medical School, working on the EBNA1 protein of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). In 1991, she established her own laboratory at McMaster University (Hamilton Canada), studying the structure, function and DNA interactions of EBNA1 and the human replication protein RPA. In 1997, Dr. Frappier moved to the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, where she is currently a Professor. Her laboratory has been using proteomics methods to identify interactions of EBV proteins with host cell proteins as well as to identify roles of viral proteins in manipulating cellular pathways. These studies have led to a mechanism of mitotic segregation of EBV genomes and discovery of several new functions of viral proteins in manipulating p53, APOBEC3B, PML nuclear bodies, DNA damage responses and SUMOylation. Her lab is also known for its work in determining structure and functions of the cellular ubiquitin specific protease, USP7, as well as the mechanism by which it is targeted by herpesviruses. Dr. Frappier has held a number of prestigious awards, including National Cancer Institute of Canada Research Scientist, Medical Research Council of Canada Scientist and a tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Molecular Virology, and she is currently an Editor at Journal of Virology, Virus Research and Tumour Virus Research.

Angus Wilson is an Associate Professor at the NYU School of Medicine. He received his B.Sc. from the University of St Andrews and Ph.D. from King’s College London. As a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Fellow with Winship Herr at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, he used POU-homeodomain proteins to explore mechanisms of promoter selectivity of transcription factors. In collaboration with the Tjian Lab at UC Berkeley and an affiliated biotech start-up, he purified and cloned host cell factor 1 (HCF-1), an obligatory partner of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) trans-activator VP16. HCF-1 is now recognized as an organizing subunit of chromatin-modifying complexes important for cell cycle regulation, pluripotency, and development. More recent studies have focused on the regulation of KSHV and HSV gene expression during reactivation from latency. This has expanded into the use of third-generation RNA sequencing approaches to unravel complex viral transcriptomes and to study the deposition and function of m6A and other RNA modifications.

Christine O’Connor, PhD is an Associate Professor at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute in the Genomic Medicine Department and Infection Biology Program. She obtained her PhD in Microbiology in 2006 from the University of Virginia, where she studied the gammaherpesvirus, KSHV. She continued herpesvirus research, completing two post-doctoral fellowships at Princeton University and the Cleveland Clinic, focusing on cytomegalovirus-encoded GPCRs. Prior to joining the faculty at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. O’Connor spent two years at the University at Buffalo-SUNY as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology. Work in the O’Connor Lab is aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying CMV latency and reactivation, with a particular interest in the contributions of the viral-encoded GPCRs to these phases of infection.

Chris Boutell is an MRC programme leader at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR). Under the supervision of Dr Frazer Rixon he received his PhD in Structural Virology from the University of Glasgow (2000), which focused on the biophysical characterization of HSV-1 capsid assembly. As a post-doctoral fellow in Professor Roger Everett’s group, he helped to define the biochemical properties of the HSV-1 ubiquitin ligase ICP0; a key immediate-early regulatory protein required to stimulate the onset of HSV-1 lytic infection and productive reactivation of viral genomes from latency. The Boutell lab at the MRC-University of Glasgow CVR investigates the role of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like pathways in the spatiotemporal regulation of intrinsic and innate host-cell immune defences to infection.

Dr. Joshua Schiffer is an infectious disease physician and researcher who develops mathematical models to address significant medical challenges. A major focus of his work is to analyze strategies to achieve an HIV cure in people who require antiviral drugs for their entire lifetime, due to reservoirs of latent virus. These models assess the potential of a wide variety of potential curative technologies. Dr. Schiffer and colleagues also use mathematical modeling to study how T cells help control numerous herpes viruses that cause disease in healthy people and in cancer patients with compromised immune systems. They develop models to explain when and how latent viruses reactivate and use models to optimize the effectiveness of antiviral drugs. His team is also focusing on COVID-19, including developing models of the immune response against the coronavirus and the best treatment strategies.

Ann M. Arvin, MD is Lucile Packard Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology Emerita, Stanford University, and Senior Vice President, Research, Vir Biotechnology Inc. Her investigations of varicella zoster virus (VZV) have combined targeted mutagenesis of the VZV genome to define functions of viral proteins and promoters, viral protein manipulations of host cell proteins and signaling pathways to promote replication and overcome intrinsic defenses, viral and host cell factors involved in the transcriptional regulation of VZV genes, and function-structure relationships, together with effects on pathogenesis in the severe combined immunodeficiency mouse model of VZV tropism for skin, sensory ganglia and T lymphocytes. Her clinical research has focused on the developing immune system in infants and children, particularly adaptive T cell immunity to viral infections and vaccines, including VZV, herpes simplex virus, cytomegalovirus, and measles. Dr. Arvin is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Academy of the American Society for Microbiology, Association of American Physicians and American Pediatric Society. She completed her AB, Brown University; MA, Brandeis University; MD, University of Pennsylvania; residency, University of California San Francisco and postdoctoral fellowship, Stanford University.