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Conference Review

Dr Ilaria Capua presenting her keynote.
Dr Ilaria Capua presenting her keynote.

A student´s eye view of the 3rd Med-Vet-Net Annual Scientific Conference held in Lucca, Italy, 27-30 June 2007.

The magnificent Il Ciocco conference centre was host to this year’s Annual Med-Vet-Net Scientific Conference in the heart of Tuscany.


This year, 198 delegates were treated to the historic town of Lucca, which is set in the remote mountainous area surrounding Pisa. Lucca is known worldwide for the production of fine wine and food, which many of the attendees found out first hand with the lavish continental breakfasts and six course dinners that were provided. This was the 3rd Med-Vet-Net Annual Scientific Conference on the prevention and control of zoonoses in Europe, and took place from 27 to 30 June. With this year’s conference being host to delegates from over 19 countries, with many of the delegates attending from non-Med Vet Net institutions or projects. The four-day conference was divided into six sessions with a final day of discussion groups.

The conference started with a talk from the network director Prof Diane Newell and a welcome from the Vice-Mayor of Lucca. There were some very topical, and in some cases, controversial keynote lectures. Sir Prof Howard Dalton (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), UK) was the first keynote speaker with an extremely thought provoking account of the ‘Effects of climate change on infectious disease’. This lecture linked the vastly differing topics of carbon footprints, the rise in sea levels and finally the effect of climate change on the spread and survival of vectors, and agents of infectious disease. Already the effects of changes to the distribution of vectors due to climate change are evident with the spread of bluetongue and tick-borne diseases for example Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis virus. I found this lecture to be extremely enlightening but I was also pleased to see that Defra is thinking this far ahead for their mandate. Other keynote lectures included the ‘Future of vaccine research’, ‘Molecular and modelling tools for the attribution of risk pathways for food-borne diseases’, ‘Avian Flu’ and ‘The impact of systematic reviews and quality criteria on publications regarding food safety and food-borne zoonoses’.

There were some really ground-breaking talks and the level of science presented at this meeting was high. I found the talk ‘Early Host response to Salmonella and Campylobacter’ by Riny Janssen of particular interest because my PhD is based on the use of probiotics to control Salmonella infection in pigs. Riny and co-workers have been using murine host arrays to study the response of the host to infection with either Salmonella or Campylobacter. Also Bill Cooley’s talk ‘Host–Pathogen interactions as studied by Confocal Microscopy’ was an excellent example of how confocal microscopy plays a key role as a research tool.

The three poster sessions covered a multitude of topics ranging from host–microbe interactions to New and Emerging Zoonoses. I had the opportunity to present a poster on the work entitled “Quantification of organic acids produced by porcine microflora and their effect on S. Typhimurium invasion and viability in vitro”. The poster sessions, quiz and American-themed bar, provided an ideal opportunity to discuss work and possible collaborations with researchers from similar disciplines from all over Europe.

I don’t think anyone who attended the Med-Vet-Net conference will forget the Tuscan cultural display, ‘Gil Sbandieratori’. Although I’m not sure of the translation, death by flag may have been more appropriate. We were treated to a local Tuscan flag dance in which men and women dressed as what I can only describe as ‘court jesters’ and performed intricate and skilful dance displays which involved throwing very large flags to each other across the courtyard..

I would like to thank the conference organiser Diane Newell for a fantastic conference and for such a beautiful venue, as well as Trudy, Jennie and Teresa for all their hard work helping Diane. All I can say is roll on the 4th Med Vet Net Annual Conference in St Malo, France (11–14 June 2008).

James Collins,
PhD student, VLA
 
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 Page Contact: Jennie Drew - Last modified: 2007-08-31