Following the success of the (first) European on Viral Zoonoses in October 2001, the organisers were encourage to arrange a second meeting, again at the attractive venue of St Raphael on the Cote d’Azure. On this occasion some 110 participants attended to enjoy an excellent 2 and half days of science devoted to viral zoonotic diseases, covering ecology, epidemiology, virology and prevention.

The meeting comprised keynote talks from invited speakers, oral presentations selected from offered abstracts, and a good number of posters. Scientifically the meeting was again highly successful, with the all invited speakers giving outstanding lectures. These highlighted the continuing threat to human health of zoonotic viruses, most recently exemplified by SARS, and reinforced the view that overall funding for research in this area, in Europe at least, remains inadequate. The meeting opened with an overview of the subject from Brian Mahy (Atlanta) who nicely set the scene by discussing the global importance of viral zoonoses, using examples such as West Nile, hantaviruses and monkeypox viruses. Since this talk preceded a champagne reception it was particularly well attended!

On the first full day of the meeting we awoke not to the expected South of France sunshine but extremely heavy rain that battered on the roof of the conference centre – the speaker’s microphone had to be turned up full to hear the presentations. The day began with a superb talk by Adriano Aguzzi (Zurich) on prion pathogenesis, who illustrated the power of mouse transgenics to the study the sequence of events resulting in prion infection of the central nervous system. Franz Heinz (Vienna) described detailed analysis of flavivirus membrane fusion, the fastest known viral fusion mechanism analysed to date. Willy Spaan (Leiden) gave a timely presentation on SARS coronavirus, describing the rapid progress on molecular characterisation of the virus responsible and the new insights into coronavirus replication that have been made. Michele Bouloy (Paris) reported on the role of the Rift Valley fever virus NSs protein in pathogenesis and presented exciting data indicating NSs acts globally in the infected cell to inhibit RNA polymerase II-mediated transcription. Marion Koopmans (Bilthoven) reviewed the recent avian influenza virus outbreak in the Netherlands; millions of chickens were destroyed to contain the outbreak. In addition there was a single human fatality and nearly a hundred farm workers were infected, the majority reporting severe conjunctivitis. Finally Vincent Deubel (Lyon) described the development of a hamster model to study Nipah virus pathogenesis and encouraging preliminary data on vaccine development. Nearly all the important zoonotic viruses were covered either in the keynote talks or the offered papers, so hantaviruses, Ebola, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, rabies, etc all had their exposure.

Once again the organisers are indebted to financial support for the meeting generously provided by Aventis-Pasteur, Baxter Vaccine, Chiron Vaccines, Fort Dodge Animal Health and Virbac, as well as the St Raphael municipality. Plans are well in hand for the next meeting, same venue but earlier in the season, in May 2005.



Richard M Elliott
November 2003