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First Round of Abstract Submission Ends: Mar 30, 2024
Extended Early Bird Ends: Dec 28, 2023

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Chang-Qing Gao
Central South University, China
Title: Will update soon
Will update soon
Prof. Michael I. Bukrinsky
George Washington University, USA
Title: Key role of HIV Nef in Neuropathogenesis
Dr. Bukrinsky is Professor of Microbiology, Immunology & Tropical Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The George Washington University School of Medicine. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia. He graduated from the 2nd State Medical School in Moscow, Russia, and did his PhD at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, defending his thesis in 1984. Dr. Bukrinsky is a world-recognized expert on HIV biology and pathogenesis, having published over 200 papers, reviews and book chapters including publications in such top scientific journals as Science, Nature, PLoS Biology and PNAS. He is also an author on 12 US patents. Dr. Bukrinsky was among the first to realize that the ability of HIV to infect macrophages and quiescent T lymphocytes depends on unique capacity of this virus to transport its genetic material through intact nuclear envelope. This discovery identified HIV nuclear import as a novel target for anti-HIV therapeutics. Another major discovery of Dr. Bukrinsky is identification of the mechanism behind high risk of atherosclerosis in HIV patients. He demonstrated that HIV protein Nef affects the function of the main cellular cholesterol transporter ABCA1, thus impairing HDL maturation and reducing its anti-atherogenic activity. This research identified Nef and ABCA1 as therapeutic targets that can be used to treat this dangerous complication of HIV infection. His most recent discovery is a finding that Nef-carrying extracellular vesicles induce long-lasting inflammatory status in myeloid cells, including progenitors. Targeting this phenomenon is essential for HIV cure efforts to avoid persistent inflammation in HIV-infected individuals after elimination of the virus. Dr. Bukrinsky is a winner of the GW Distinguished Researcher award in 2007 and Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for Scholarship in 2011. Dr. Bukrinsky’s research has been funded by NIH grants for over 25 years. He is a regular reviewer on several NIH Study Sections, and also reviews HIV-related grant applications for international and US foundations (NHMRC, Australia; Health Research Board, Ireland; Welcome Trust, Great Britain; Israel Science Foundation; AmFAR, USA). Dr. Bukrinsky is a fellow of the American Heart Association. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Open AIDS Journal and a member of Editorial Boards of a number of virology and medical journals: Virology, Retrovirology, Open Virology, Molecular Medicine. Dr. Bukrinsky mentored a number of graduate and post-graduate HIV researchers, many of whom won prestigious awards and continue as independent investigators in other institutions all over the world.
Prof. Jianfeng Lu
Tongji University, China
Title: Will update soon
Will update soon
Dr. Rodrigo Pacheco
Fundación Ciencia & Vida, Chile
Title: Will update soon
Rodrigo Pacheco studied Biochemistry in the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (1995-2001). He performed his PhD (2001-2006) in the Universidad de Barcelona where studied the role of neurotransmitters as modulators of human T-cell function. Later, he did a postdoctoral training in the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2006-2008) where he studied the role of Fc-gamma receptors in dendritic cells in inflammation. Since 2009 Rodrigo Pacheco has been leading the Laboratory of Neuroimmunology of Fundación Ciencia & Vida, a Chilean non-profit foundation geared to perform basic and applied research in biomedicine. During these years Pacheco's team has been focused in the study of how dopamine regulates the T-cell driven inflammaion in the gut and the brain in models of Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel diseases.
Dr. Isabelle BRUNET
College de France, CNRS, France
Title: The Neurovascular interface in health an disease
Isabelle Brunet is a neuroscientist who has established her research line at the interface between neuroscience and vascular biology. She worked during her PhD in axon guidance in the visual system and the role of Engrailed2 as an unconventional guidance cue. She did her PhD with Alain Prochiantz and Christine Holt. Then she moved to vascular biology and angiogenesis field in the lab of Anne Eichmann to investigate the guidance of vascular endothelial cells and how development of the nervous and vascular system is orchestrated during development.

She is now deciphering how neurovascular interactions develop and become functional, and has been awarded in 2014 an Inserm permanent position (ranked 1st) to establish her team in the CIRB in the College de France, in Paris. The focus of her team is to understand how the neuronal and vascular system interact and can interfere in health and diseases. Her current team is composed of 10 members, and uses mice and fish transgenic models combined to molecular approaches, 3D-imaging and functional assays.

She has expertise in vascular, lymphatic, neuronal development, patterning and guidance and is providing evaluation at national and international levels for academia (Inserm CSS, HCERES, Doctoral Schools…) and grants/journal review.
Dr. Peter Kovermann
Research Center Jülich GmbH, Germany
Title: Changes in transporter function correlate with disease-severity in SLC1A2-associated epileptic encephalopathies
Dr. Peter Kovermann received his PhD in 2004 at the Department of Biophysics in the university of Osnabrück (Germany) for his dissertation in mitochondrial protein import. From 2004 to 2007, he received fellowships from the Alexander from Humbolt Society and from the Roche Research Foundation and started his postdoc at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) in the Institute for Plant Physiology on organellar ion channels in plants. In the following, he changed to the Institute for Neurophysiology at the Hanover Medical School and moved in 2012 to the Molecular- and Cellphysiology Department at the Forschungszentrum Julich. The main focus of Dr. Peter Kovermann is the functional characterization of neuronal and glial membrane proteins with an emphasis on disease-associated missense-mutations in ion channels and transporter proteins. His method spectrum encompasses biochemical and electrophysiological experiments on cell cultures or acute animal tissue slices and the behavioral testing of and immune histology of animal disease models. Another key aspect are fluorescence-based methods to study the ion concentrations and their homeostasis in cells or within organelles, and their pathological changes in neuronal disorders.
Dr. Agnieszka (Aga) Burzynska
Colorado State University, USA
Title: The role of white matter in cognitive decline in aging and dementia: revisiting old questions with new tools
Will Update soon
Dr. Brett Langley
University of Waikato, New Zealand
Title: Inhibiting histone deacetylase 6 activity to threat Charcot Marie Tooth 2A neuropathy