Speakers 2023
Ralf Bartenschlager
Professor and Director of the Department of Molecular Virology at the Centre
for Infectious Diseases at Heidelberg University, and head of the Division of Virus-Associated Carcinogenesis at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. Ralf Bartenschlager and his group have studied the replication strategies and the cell biology of medically important hepatitis viruses (HCV and HBV), flaviviruses (focusing on dengue and Zika virus), and recently SARS-CoV-2. The goal of these studies is to use gained knowledge to develop novel antiviral approaches and to characterize drugs and drug candidates for their mode-of-action. Ralf Bartenschlager has developed cell culture models for the hepatitis C virus (HCV), allowing for the first time to study viral replication in vitro and laying the foundation for the development of antiviral medications eliminating HCV in ~95% of treated individuals. In addition, he deciphered fundamental aspects of the replication cycle of plus-strand RNA viruses by means of imaging approaches. Ralf Bartenschlager was awarded, inter alia, the Robert Koch Prize in 2015, jointly with Charles M. Rice, and the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (the highest distinction for medical science in the USA) in 2016, jointly with Charles M. Rice and Michael Sofia. Since 2013, he is member of the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina).
Daniel Kuritzkes
Daniel Kuritzkes is the Harriet Ryan Albee Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Yale University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kuritzkes has published extensively on antiretroviral therapy and drug resistance in HIV-1 infection. He has chaired several multicenter studies of HIV therapy and previously chaired the AIDS Clinical Trials Group. He served as a member of the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council and as a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services panel on guidelines for antiretroviral therapy. He has been a member of several editorial boards and for 20 years served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Infectious Diseases. His research interests focus on HIV therapeutics, antiretroviral drug resistance, and HIV eradication. Since 2020 he has been involved in several COVID-19 clinical studies and Online educational programs.
Johan Neyts
Johan Neyts is full professor of Virology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He teaches virology at the medical school and at the school of dentistry. His lab has a long-standing expertise in the development of antivirals strategies and drugs against emerging and neglected viral infections such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya and other alphaviruses, enteroviruses, noroviruses, HEV and rabies and is intensively involved in the search for antiviral strategies against SARS-CoV2. A second focus of the laboratory, together with the team of Prof. Kai Dallmeier is the development of the PLLAV (Plasmid Launched Live Attenuated Virus) vaccine technology, which is based on the yellow fever virus vaccine as a vector and allows to rapidly engineer highly thermostable vaccines against multiple viral pathogens. Johan is past-president of the International Society for Antiviral Research (www.isar-icar.com). He is the co-founder of KU Leuven spin-offs AstriVax www.astrivax.com and Okapi Sciences. He published >625 papers in peer reviewed journals, has given ~300 invited lectures and has given many interviews in lay-press.
Piotr Nowak
MD, PhD is a Senior Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Director of Clinical HIV research Unit at Karolinska University Hospital, Huddinge Sweden. He is also an associate professor and group leader at the Department of Medicine / Karolinska Institutet. Dr Piotr Nowak has obtained his MD degree at Warsaw Medical University, Poland and PhD at Karolinska Institutet /Division of Virology (2007). His research is focused on understanding the impact of microbiome, and inflammation in acute and chronic viral infections (in particular HIV). He has authored over 70 peer-reviewed papers and his current research involves studies of HIV, HTLV, Hepatitis and SARS-CoV-2 infections.
Raymond F. Schinazi
Raymond F. Schinazi is the Frances Winship Walters Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology at Emory University and Director of the ViroScience and Cure Center. Dr. Schinazi research focuses on developing treatments for infections caused by HIV, HBV, HCV, herpes, dengue fever, zika, chikungunya, SARS-CoV-2 and other emerging viruses. He has authored over 600 peer-reviewed papers and holds over 100 issued US patents, which have resulted in 15 New Drug Applications (NDA). Each of Dr. Schinazi’s discoveries is nothing less than a breakthrough. Yet viewed as a whole, his impact on global health is absolutely peerless. A world leader in nucleoside chemistry, Dr. Schinazi is best known for his pioneering work on HIV, HBV and HCV drugs d4T (stavudine), 3TC (lamivudine), FTC (emtricitabine), LdT (telbivudine), and sofosbuvir (sovaldi), and in 2022 Baricitinib for COVID-19 which are all fully approved by the US FDA. More than 94 % of HIV-infected individuals in the US on combination therapy take at least one of the drugs he invented. Dr. Schinazi served on the Presidential Commission on AIDS. He is the recipient of numerous awards including three honorary degrees and the prestigious Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, the French Legion of Honor, with the rank of knight, established in 1802 by Napoleon. Dr. Schinazi is internationally recognized as one of the most influential persons in the life science sector.
Nina Weis
MD, PhD, is senior physician at Department of Infectious Diseases, Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre, and clinical professor at Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her PhD Thesis was about two new methods to characterization of meningococci. She has initiated the Danish Database for Hepatitis B and C, (DANHEP), a nationwide, clinical database of all adult patients admitted to hospital
in Denmark with chronic viral hepatitis and the Danish HIV Birth Cohort (DHBC), that is also a nationwide, clinical database of all women living with HIV in Denmark who have given birth and their children. Her research has focused on clinical, epidemiological, and virological aspects of diagnosis, treatment, and efficacy hereof in these two populations of patients with chronic viral infections. Further she has been a national investigator in Denmark of most of the multinational, randomized, clinical trials of direct acting antiviral therapy against hepatitis C. Recently, her research has also been in patients – and vaccinated individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection. She has authored over 160 peer-reviewed papers mainly about chronic viral hepatitis and HIV.