Successful User Forum on Fighting infectious diseases

On October 6th, Euro-BioImaging ERIC organized its fourth online User Forum. The topic was “Fighting infectious diseases.” The event highlighted the range of infectious disease research that can be served by high-tech imaging and expertise, from drug discovery to the biology of disease agents and immune response to infection. The event also served to inform the community about the funding opportunities available via the ISIDORe project. Altogether, 116 people attended this event from 26 countries. Many thanks to all the speakers and the attendees for making this event such a success.

An event for the infectious disease & imaging communities

Our audience was composed of researchers, core facility staff, Node staff, students, industry representatives and partners from other research infrastructures.  We were pleased to host a significant number of representatives from specialist infectious disease institutes, showcasing the relevance of imaging approaches for this community.

The event consisted of 6 great talks from the biological and biomedical imaging scientists. To get a feel for the different topics, please find links to the abstracts below.

Keynote speakers:  

• Anne-Marie Chacko, Duke-NUS Medical School, “A role for in vivo imaging in infectious disease: driving drug discovery by monitoring treatment response”. She illustrated the power of nuclear imaging in support of flavivirus research, in particular how new nuclear probes can support drug discovery for dengue virus.

• Cristina Risco Ortiz, Cell Structure Laboratory, CNB-CSIC, “Imaging viral infections: Identifying new targets for antiviral treatments” explained how her lab evaluates antiviral treatments, including for COVID-19. A suite of imaging techniques is mobilized, from light to electron microscopy, showing antiviral effects on the subcellular level.

Featuring research at our Nodes:

• Nicola I. Lorè, San Raffaele Hospital (Milan), "MRI as a tool to study murine models of chronic lung infection," in collaboration with MMMI Italian Node. The talk focused on how Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to study a novel model of opportunistic chronic lung infection, from identifying lesions to monitoring antibody response.

• Hanna Renvall, Aalto University, “Potential of functional neuroimaging techniques for understanding long-term effects of COVID-19,” in collaboration with Finnish Biomedical Imaging Node. She introduced the EU-funded Long Covid project, which will use MEG imaging to better understand neurological long COVID symptoms in patients and also bring datasets across Europe together.

• Adám Kenesei, University of Debrecen, "IL-15 trans-presentation is an autonomous, antigen independent process," in collaboration with Cellular Imaging Hungary Node. This talk highlighted work using FLIM-FRET imaging approaches to give insight into immune response and the maintenance of immunological memory.

• Hareem Elsayad, Medical University of Vienna, "The properties of blood plasma viscosity in COVID-19 patients: investigated by different techniques in different regimes," in collaboration with Austrian BioImaging/CMI Node. This talk explored how Brillouin Microscopy can be used in the clinic to characterize sticky blood plasma from COVID-19 patients.