Advancing Science hosted by Dr. Larry Corey is back for 2025 with our first events of the year. About Advancing Science: Advancing Science is a meeting series in a partnership between Herpes Cure Advocacy and HVTN to highlight the latest science in herpes, projects that are driving the field of HSV research forward amongst professionals and scientists.
Upcoming Events:
March 25th 3pm EST / 12pm EST
Dr. Betsy Herold
Disrupting the HSV:HIV Syndemic
Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) is one of the most significant factors fueling the global HIV epidemic and coinfection is associated with higher HIV plasma viral loads and increased rates of HIV transmission. Dr. Herold will discuss potential mechanisms including transcriptional responses to HSV and how these responses promote HIV replication.
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86349538179?pwd=ZkPa6ugJlgNDPiKUc2DHiNXN5NmOJS.1
Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/k65UE035S
Meeting ID: 863 4953 8179 Passcode: 199969
PAST EVENTS
World Encephalitis Day Talk
Genetic defects of brain immunity underlying childhood herpes simplex encephalitis
February 26th 3pm EST / 12pm PST
Dr. Shen-Ying Shang
Associate Professor of Clinical Investigation
Rockefeller University
Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) encephalitis (HSE) is the most common sporadic viral encephalitis in humans. It is life-threatening, and has a first peak of incidence in childhood, during primary infection. Children with HSE are not prone to other infections, including HSV-1 infections of tissues other than the brain. About 8-10% of childhood cases are due to monogenic inborn errors of 19 genes, two thirds of which are recessive, most displaying incomplete clinical penetrance. Childhood HSE can, thus, be sporadic but genetic, enabling new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Essential mechanisms of cell-intrinsic antiviral immunity in the brain are disrupted in the patients. These mechanisms include known (e.g. mutations in the TLR3 pathway) and new antiviral pathways (e.g. the TMEFF1 restriction factor), which may be type I IFN-dependent (e.g. IFNAR1) or -independent (e.g. RIPK3). They operate in cortical or brainstem neurons, underlying forebrain and brainstem infections, respectively. Conversely, the most severe inborn errors of leukocytes, including a complete lack of myeloid and/or lymphoid blood cells, do not underlie HSE. Inborn errors of intrinsic immunity in brain-resident neurons, as genetic etiologies of HSE, broaden host defense in natura from the leukocytes of the immune system to other cells of the whole organism.
SPEAKER BIO: Shen-Ying Zhang, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Rockefeller University in USA, and an INSERM senior researcher (DR1) at the Imagine Institute in France. She is a physician scientist by training. After completing her medical study at the Shanghai Fudan University in China, she pursued her interest in the investigations of immunopathogenesis of infectious diseases by joining the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases as a post- doctoral fellow, where she also obtained her PhD of Immunology and Genetics under the mentorship of Prof Jean-Laurent Casanova at the Paris Descartes University in France. Since 2008, she leads a team working on human genetic and immunological determinants of severe viral diseases, in the two branches of the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases in USA and in France (https://www.hgid.org). She has made substantial contributions to our understanding of human inborn errors of immunity predisposing to severe viral infections mainly encephalitis caused by HSV-1 and other viruses. She played a major role in the discovery of the various monogenic defects underlying childhood HSV-1 encephalitis, via impairment of known TLR3-IFN-mediated or new previously unknown molecular mechanisms of cell-intrinsic immunity in brain neurons. Defective organ-specific cell-intrinsic immunity, as opposed to hematopoietic cell immunity, can thus result in susceptibility to severe viral infection of a specific organ in humans. She is a member of the Henry Kunkel Society and the American Society of Clinical Investigation. Funding resources: the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of USA, the National Research Agency (ANR) of France, the French ANRS agency for emerging infectious diseases (ANRS MIE), the Horizon Europe research programs, the American Heart Association, as well as Rockefeller University internal fundings from the Robertson Therapeutic Development and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research.