HIV Reservoir characterisation Workshop: 14-16 september 2018
Scope
Challenges and ethical considerations of HIV cure and treatment interruption trials will be thoroughly discussed during this year’s workshops. Moreover, workshops will provide the participants with a thorough understanding of HIV quantification tools including PCR-based and cell-based functional assays, which are of great importance in therapy monitoring for the development of HIV cure strategies. An introductory course to ex vivo viral outgrowth assays and its use to quantify the replication competent HIV reservoir will be covered. The participants will receive an intensive training on PCR, qPCR, digital and digital droplet PCR methods and single genome sequencing with a comprehensive overview of clinical use of these methods and clinical significance of various HIV markers. Novel aspects of HIV persistence such as clonal expansion and integration site analysis will also be discussed and thorough overview of assays to monitor them will be presented. Given that the host’s immune system is an indispensable component of an effective cure strategy, in addition to virological assays, the workshop will present an overview of immunological assays that are commonly used to assess the competency of the immune system. The workshop will conclude with comprehensive hands-on sessions that will include statistical data analysis training sessions.
Target audience
Researchers interested in: low level RNA or DNA quantification by digital PCR and immune monitoring assays especially in the field of HIV research.
Tentative program
Friday 14 September
Speaker | Institute | Subject | |
---|---|---|---|
08:30-08:40 | Linos Vandekerckhove | HIV Cure Research Center | Welcome |
08:40-09:40 | Ward De Spiegelaere | Ghent University | Description of PCR based methods: PCR, qPCR, digital PCR, droplet digital PCR |
09:40-10:00 | Coffee break | ||
10:00-12:30 | Practical exercises dPCR | Hand on practice dPCR platform | |
12:30-14:00 | Lunch | ||
14:00-16:00 | Practical exercises dPCR | Hand on practice dPCR platform | |
16:00-17:00 | Clarissa Van Hecke and Sofie Rutsaert | HIV Cure Research Center | qPCR and droplet digital PCR data analysis in practice. |
Speaker | Institute | Subject | |
---|---|---|---|
09:00-09:30 | Linos Vandekerckhove | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | Introduction in HIV-1 reservoir characterisation |
09:30-10:30 | Linos Vandekerckhove and Marie-Angelique De Scheerder | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | How to set up HIV Cure studies |
10:30-10:50 | Coffee break | ||
10:50-11:50 | Linos Vandekerckhove and Marie-Angelique De Scheerder | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | Lessons learned from HIV Cure studies |
11:50-13:30 | Lunch | ||
13:30-14:30 | Sofie Rutsaert | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | Clinical applicability and clinical significance of HIV markers (total HIV DNA, 2LTR) and analysis of ddPCR data. |
14:30-14:45 | Coffee break | ||
14:45-15:45 | Sofie Rutsaert | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | Integrated HIV DNA quantification. |
15:45-16:30 | Maja Kiselinova | UZ Gent | Cell-associated HIV RNA quantification and normalization. |
16:30-16:45 | Coffee break | ||
16:45-17:45 | Marie-Angelique De Scheerder | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | Single Genome sequencing |
Speaker | Institute | Subject | |
---|---|---|---|
8:30-9:30 | Basiel Cole | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | Clonal expansion and Integrated HIV. |
9:30-10:30 | Mathieu Amand | Infectious Diseases Research Unit, Luxembourg Institute of Health | Humanized Mice model in HIV research |
10:30-11:00 | Coffee break | ||
11:00-12:00 | Magdalena Sips | HIV Cure Research Center UGent | Introduction to immune monitoring assays. |
12:00-13:15 | Lunch | ||
13:15-14:15 | Wojciech Witkowski | HIV Cure Research Center | Assessing and improving cellular immunity to HIV. |
14:15-14:30 | Coffee break | ||
14:30-15:30 | Magdalena Sips | HIV Cure Research Center | Monitoring the immune system at the level of cell, tissue and organ. |
Practical Information
Registration
Registration for the workshop includes registration for the minisymposium on 13 September 2018. It is possible to register from 01/03/2018 until 31/08/2018 (early bird deadline is 30/06/2018). More information can be found here.
The amount of participants is limited to 30 researchers.
Venue
Corneel Heymanslaan 10, 9000 Ghent