World Congress on
Virology

I, Dr Yusuf Hussaini have spent more than a decade teaching and supervising projects in the fields such as Virology, Immunology, Molecular Biology and Microbial Genetics. During this time I have worked on a number of researches to formulate and improvise methods of navigating through the deplorable economic problems in my Nigeria to achieve maximum health benefits using minimal resources. In all these years I have worked closely with experts to connect hypotheses to experiment. Over the coming decade, I will continue to work on important viral problems comparing efficiencies and effectiveness of different methods and approaches to viral diseases cures.

His research interest are in the field of Virology, Immunology, Molecular Biology and Microbial Genetics. Working towards important viral problems by comparing efficiencies and effectiveness of different methods and finding approaches to viral diseases cures.

Dr. Lanying Du is an Associate Member and Co-Head of Viral Immunology Laboratory at Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute of New York Blood Center. She has over 10 years of experience in designing and developing effective vaccines against emerging infectious viruses with more than 100 papers in the related research fields.

The research focuses of Dr. Du are on 1) the development of vaccines and therapeutic antibodies for the prevention and treatment of emerging infectious diseases caused by influenza viruses, coronaviruses, including Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), as well as blood transfusion-associated virus, including Zika virus (ZIKV); and 2) the study of pathogenic mechanisms of these viruses, based on which to design novel vaccines and therapeutic antibodies.

Dr. Julien van Grevenynghe is an assistant professor in the INRS-Institut Armand Frappier (Laval, Quebec). Dr. van Grevenynghe obtained his Ph.D. from INSERM U456 and University of Rennes 1 (Bretagne, France). Then, he joined Dr. Rafick Sekaly’s team (CR-CHUM in Montreal and VGTI in Florida) where he focused on the characterization of the transcriptional factor Foxo3a in the long-term maintenance of memory CD4 T-cells during chronic HIV-1 infection. Today, Dr. van Grevenynghe is an expert on viral pathogenesis where his laboratory studies (i) new molecular mechanisms associated with natural immune protection in elite controllers and (ii) the involvement of metabolism by-products such as oxidative stress that occurs since HIV-1 primary-infection on memory CD4 T-cell impairments. His last publication as senior research authors were accepted in high impact factor peer-to-peer papers including Cell Host and Microbe and PLoS Pathogen.

In addition to metabolic disturbances, modern antiretroviral therapy (ART) is unable to counteract immune defects that are associated with residual inflammation alongside viral persistence. To eventually achieve ART termination, it is critical to find new ways to boost protective immunity which includes the restoration of long-lasting memory T-cells in HIV-1-infected patients. In this context, my research group concentrates his work on the characterization of molecular and metabolic disturbances (sustained type I intereferon, reduced autophagy process and heat shock protein expression) that may be responsible for defective T-cell-mediated immunity in HIV-1-infected patients. Our work also includes the use of a rare group of naturally protected individuals, called the elite controllers. Understanding the molecular mechanisms driving the natural protection against VIH-1 is a powerful tool for the design of targeting therapies in the other groups of infected patients. Of note, our laboratory employs several modern experimental approaches including multi-parameter and imaging flow cytometry as well as Seahorse metabolic flux analyser.