Session Chair: Prof. Paul Digard (The Roslin Institute, UK)

First Speaker: Prof. Shan-Lu Liu (Director of Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program, The Ohio State University, USA) –

Talk Title – Membrane fusion and cell-to-cell transmission of SARS-CoV-2

Dr. Shan-Lu Liu is a Professor of Virology and Co-Director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens’ Program of The Ohio State University’s Infectious Diseases Institute. He is also Associate Director of the Center for Retrovirus Research of Ohio State. He obtained his PhD from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle before being recruited to McGill University as Canada Research Chair. He joined The Ohio State University in 2016. Dr. Liu’s research is focused on virus-host interaction, particularly host factors that modulate viral membrane fusion, entry, and release. In the last few years, research from Dr. Liu’s lab has provided insights for understanding how some host restriction factors IFITM, LY6E, TIM and SERINC limit infection by HIV, Ebolavirus, Zika virus, and SARS-CoV-2, as well as how these viruses evolve antagonism to counteract the host restrictions. For COVID-related research, Dr. Liu has been focusing on the molecular andcellular mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 entry, membrane fusion, cell-to-cell transmission, immune responses, as well as vaccine development. Dr. Liu serves as Editor of Journal of Virology and is an elected Fellow of American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Second Speaker: Miss Rachael Dempsey (PhD Student, University of Liverpool, UK) 

Talk Title – Genotype to phenotype consequences in MERS-CoV

Rachael is a second year PhD student in the Hiscox lab and her project is focussed on understanding how mutations in MERS spike affect viral entry and neutralisation. To do this, she’s using MERS spike pseudotypes and full-length reverse genetics clones to investigate mutations that have been identified in MERS-CoV clinical samples.