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Pointe-à-Pitre, 29/11/17 – On 23-24 November 2017, the Annual Meeting of the EU-funded ZIKAlliance research project took place in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, gathering about 80 members that provided an update on the project one year after launch. The Annual Meeting was held in Guadeloupe as a tribute to the local partners who implemented one of the first and most remarkable cohort study of pregnant women infected by Zika virus and their infants.
ZIKAlliance partners from 20 different countries participated in the consortium’s Annual Meeting. The meeting included scientific presentations and updates on the research carried out so far by all work packages on a range of different topics such as clinical sciences, clinical biology and immunology, entomology, diagnostics, virology and antivirals, pathophysiology and animal models through to animal reservoirs and social sciences, communications activities and operational topics.
Two parallel working sessions saw members from WP1 and WP2 to discuss common issues on diagnostics for the clinical studies, and members from WP3, WP4, and WP6 to discuss their working strategies and future work. However, many discussions occurred across work packages reflecting the integration of the research and the spirit of collaboration towards a common goal.
Professor Xavier de Lamballerie, ZIKAlliance Scientific Coordinator, greeted the audience and opened the two-day conference by highlighting the good work being done so far by all consortium’s partners: “One year on in the project, I would like to congratulate all members for their work, which thus far has produced 55 research outputs, included journal articles already published (32) and those coming soon.”
The next step will see a symposium organised by ZIKAlliance and supported by the European Society for Virology in Marseille in June 2018. The conference is open to the other two consortia, ZikaPLAN and ZIKAction, which are warmly invited to join it. Professor Annelies Wilder-Smith attended the ZIKAlliance meeting representing our sister network; ZikaPLAN.
ZIKAlliance project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement N.734548.
For more information about ZIKAlliance or ZIKAlliance’s activities, please contact Xavier de Lamballerie (Scientific Coordinator) at xavier.de-lamballerie@univ-amu.fr or phone: +33 491324420; or Flavia Mariani (Project Manager) at flavia.mariani@zikalliance.eu or phone: +33 491324412.
