Retrovirus Conference in Prague, April 29-May 4, 2010

[parvofighter]

Another Retrovirus conference: with more of the hot XMRV researchers attending this conference in the EU. Might one of our Czech Republic or EU members attend?

Prague 2010 Centennial Retrovirus Conference: Ap 29-May 04, 2010
Institute of Molecular Genetics, Prague, Czech Republic
From: http://www.crm2010.org/programme/provisional-programme.html

Presenters include:
Paul Jolicoeur (Clinic. Res. Inst., Montreal, Canada) Dr Jolicoeur is doing a Canadian study on ME/CFS and XMRV. Might he be reporting on the results??: Presentation: Action @ the cell surface
John Coffin (Tufts, MA): Presentation: Retrovirus Evolution
Jonathan Stoye (NIMR, London, UK): Cellular Defenses
Francis W. Ruscetti (NIH, MD): Roles of Innate and Adapted Defenses in Infections by Retroviruses
Stephen P. Goff (Columbia U, NY): Summary observations

Registration info: http://www.crm2010.org/registration.html
All participants are kindly recommended to register via the Online Registration Form.

REGISTRATION FEES
Early registration
(before 8 March 2010)
Late registration(between 9 March 2010 & 14 April 2010)
Delegate
480 EUR
580 EUR
Student*
250 EUR
300 EUR
Accompanying person
40 EUR
45 EUR
* Letter of confirmation signed by Head of Department is to be faxed/emailed to Meeting Secretariat for Student fee application.

My Note: Interestingly, the conference program is almost meticulous in NOT mentioning XMRV. So no guarantee how much focus there might be on XMRV... Then again, some of the key XMRV researchers are tantalizingly there. And this is not a severely expensive conference, especially for students. Is this something the forum members might sponsor, for one of our EU members to attend and report back? Might the WPI or CAA or IACFSME or ESME send a delegate?

 

[Cort]

Parvo is on fire! Ruscetti, Joliceur - Andrea W. said - 'wait until April' but why no mention of CFS or XMRV.........All the descriptions seem pretty general, though. hmmmm

 

[parvofighter]

Cross-functional topics?

Not so sure about the fire... :In bed: I'm just being a scribe.

Parvo is on fire! Ruscetti, Joliceur - Andrea W. said - 'wait until April' but why no mention of CFS or XMRV.........All the descriptions seem pretty general, though. hmmmm

Keep in mind too, that of the over 40 speakers, they only mention AIDS once, much less HIV. My guess is they're either trying to be very cross-functional across HIV/HTLV/XMRV/ERV's... or trying to keep unpublished (?or about-to-be-published?) XMRV topics out of the media. Again, hmmm?!

 

[Kati]

If Dr Jolicoeur is going over there, then it must be because he got something to say??? Please say something nice!
(For those that don't know, he's a canadian scientist). Maybe they will broadcast some information online?

 

[Alesh]

Accidentally, I work part time in the same campus but not in the Institute of Molecular Genetics, where this conference will take place. I know that they are planning to have a special section on XMRV at least according to this member of the organizing committee:

http://www.img.cas.cz/public/skupiny/Hejnar.html

 

[Frickly]

Alesh, Can you peak in and tell us what happens?

 

[leelaplay]

Accidentally, I work part time in the same campus but not in the Institute of Molecular Genetics, where this conference will take place. I know that they are planning to have a special section on XMRV at least according to this member of the organizing committee:

http://www.img.cas.cz/public/skupiny/Hejnar.html

Alesh -THanks for the inside scoop. I hope that you'll be able to attend some of the conference. How exciting.

I wonder why Mikovits isn't presenting.

I just sent an email asking about broadcasting & posting vids+transcripts. The CROI did such a great job of it - hope these guys do too.

The emails of the organizing committee, in case anyone else wants to do the same, are:

rene.daniel@jefferson.edu; anna.skalka@fccc.edu; hejnar@img.cas.cz; svoboda@img.cas.cz; takac@img.cas.cz; info@crm2010.org

 

[leelaplay]

I just heard back from them. I do hope someone can make it to the conference!

Dear xxxy,

I am sorry to inform you that we do not plan neither live broadcasting nor videos at the Centennial Retrovirus Meeting. We stick to the non-recording policy as we want to encourage people in presenting absolutely new data and synthetic hypothesis. Thic policy is quite common at scientific meetings, look for example at Keystone Symposia pages.

We asked speakers to provide us with their presentations and these ppt files will be distributed to the participants at the end of meeting on memory sticks. This is, however, purely voluntary and people usually do not provide "sensitive" slides. It seems like a good compromise to us.

If you are interested in getting the final set of ppt slides, do not hesitate to contact me after the meeting. I am very sorry that we cannot meet you in Prague in April.

Cordially,

 

[Frickly]

I soooo want to go to Prague!

 

[Navid]

Prague in the Springtime...so lovely!!!!

I soooo want to go to Prague!

oooh me too...it's such a beautiful city.

but that's the catch 22 w/this darn disease we're too physically weak and tired to go to these conferences where we would be visible as the faces and voices of CFID's.

hopefully someone can attend and report back to us.

thank god for our computers!!!!!:

 

[Rita]

http://www.crm2010.org/programme/final-scientific-programme.html
Final programme for the Centennial Retrovirus Meeting, Prague, April 29, May 4.2010

 

[natasa778]

Thank you Rita!

Is it me or is there not a single XMRV presentation?? Only a German prostate poster session...

 

[Michelle]

XMRV presentations at Prague Retrovirus conference including Mikovits

As I haven't seen it posted yet, I thought I'd go ahead and do it, especially since I usually just lurk/read the forum voraciously but don't have much energy to actually participate.

(Abstract removed. Sorry - Good Digging! - but we've been asked by the WPI not to display Dr. Mikovits abstract on the site because of worries about prepublication dispersal of it. Yes, the abstract is available for public viewing on the conference website but researchers at the conferences understand that public discussion of it is a no no and they refrain from that. We, on the other hand, are almost like a kind of media outlet - so we have to be careful that we're not dispersing into into the general public - where its not supposed to be. That's my understanding anyway.)
--------------------------------------------

P53

'Prevalence of XMRV in prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome
patients in Germany'
O. Hohn1, K. Strohschein2, H. Krause3, R. Kurth1, C. Scheibenbogen2, N. Bannert1
1 Robert Koch-Institute, ZBS4, Berlin, Germany
2 Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Institute for Medical
Immunology, Berlin, Germany
3 Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Urology, Berlin, Germany

Background: A novel gammaretrovirus named xenotropic murine leukemia
virus-related virus (XMRV) has been recently identified and found to
have a prevalence of 40% in prostate tumor samples from US American
patients carrying a homozygous R462Q mutation in the RNaseL gene. More
recently XMRV has also been found in up to 67% of US American patients
suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) without any correlation
to the RNaseL genotype. The aim of our study is therefore the
determination of the XMRV prevalence in prostate cancer cases and in
CFS patients in Germany.

Methods: Real-time PCR was used for RNaseL genotyping of prostate
cancer samples. Highly sensitive nested PCR and RT-PCR approaches were
applied for the detection of XMRV gag sequences. Using recombinant
Gag- and Env-proteins an ELISA was developed for the detection of
anti-XMRV antibodies in human sera samples.

Results: 589 prostate tumor samples were genotyped by real-time PCR
with regard to the RNaseL mutation. In agreement with earlier data,
12.9% (76 samples) were shown to be of the QQ genotype. However, XMRV
specific sequences were detected at neither the DNA nor the RNA level
and none of the 146 sera analyzed from prostate cancer patients
contained XMRV-specific antibodies. The outcome of the ongoing CFS
study will be presented at the conference.

Conclusion: Our results indicate a much lower prevalence (or even
complete absence) of XMRV in prostate tumor samples in Germany. One
possible reason for this could be a relatively recent acquisition of
the virus from a murine host and a geographically restricted incidence
of XMRV infections.

ALSO

P01
Functional and sequence variants of the XPR1 receptor for mouse xenotropic
gammaretroviruses

Y. Yan1, Q. Liu1, C. Martin1, K. Wollenberg2, C.A. Kozak1
1 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, Bethesda MD, USA
2 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch Office
of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology, Bethesda MD, USA

The evolutionary interactions between retroviruses and their receptors result in the appearance of novel viral envelope variants and host restrictions on entry. The mouse xenotropic/polytropic (X/P-MuLV) gammaretroviruses rely on the XPR1 cell surface receptor for entry into host cells, and polymorphic variants of this receptor have been identified in different rodent species. We used a panel of 7 X/P-MuLVs with 6 distinct tropisms in rodent cells to screen for infectivity on cells of mammals carrying sequence variants of XPR1. The X/P-MuLVs were tested in a single round infectivity assay and included 2 X-MuLVs, 2 P-MuLVs, 2 wild mouse isolates and XMRV, an X-MuLV-like virus that has been found in human prostate cancers and patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. We identified 11 tropisms defined by resistance to different combinations of these viruses. Most resistance patterns were recapitulated in hamster or mouse cells expressing cloned XPR1 genes, and sequence comparisons and mutational analysis identified residues critical for entry.

We also show that XPR1 is under positive selection in rodents, and that one of the two residues under strong selection is critical for virus entry. We describe the distribution of the 4 known functional variants of mouse XPR1 in Mus species and identify a novel 5th XPR1 variant that is highly restrictive and has a widespread distribution in Eurasian mice that harbor X-MuLVs. These gammaretroviruses and their XPR1 receptor are thus highly functionally polymorphic, a consequence of the evolutionary pressures that favor both host resistance and virus escape mutants. This variation accounts for multiple naturally occurring virus resistance phenotypes and perhaps contributes to the widespread distribution of these viruses in rodent and non-rodent species.

 

[Michelle]

D'oh! My spelling sucks when I've first waken up. Dr Judy's last name should end in an S not a Z. But I can't seem to edit the thread title.

 

[kurt]

Thanks. Someone posted this yesterday but we were asked to remove it as it was unpublished. However, given that this is from a published program available now online, I think we have to allow this. If anyone has contrary information, please contact the MODs...

 

[kurt]

D'oh! My spelling sucks when I've first waken up. Dr Judy's last name should end in an S not a Z. But I can't seem to edit the thread title.

That requires a MOD or Admin. Anyway, it is fixed now.

Mikovits' comment about cytokine signature is interesting, hopefully more will be published on that.

 

[Hope123]

P53

'Prevalence of XMRV in prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome
patients in Germany'
O. Hohn1, K. Strohschein2, H. Krause3, R. Kurth1, C. Scheibenbogen2, N. Bannert1
1 Robert Koch-Institute, ZBS4, Berlin, Germany
2 Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Institute for Medical
Immunology, Berlin, Germany
3 Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Urology, Berlin, Germany

Background: A novel gammaretrovirus named xenotropic murine leukemia
virus-related virus (XMRV) has been recently identified and found to
have a prevalence of 40% in prostate tumor samples from US American
patients carrying a homozygous R462Q mutation in the RNaseL gene. More
recently XMRV has also been found in up to 67% of US American patients
suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) without any correlation
to the RNaseL genotype. The aim of our study is therefore the
determination of the XMRV prevalence in prostate cancer cases and in
CFS patients in Germany.

Methods: Real-time PCR was used for RNaseL genotyping of prostate
cancer samples. Highly sensitive nested PCR and RT-PCR approaches were
applied for the detection of XMRV gag sequences. Using recombinant
Gag- and Env-proteins an ELISA was developed for the detection of
anti-XMRV antibodies in human sera samples.

Results: 589 prostate tumor samples were genotyped by real-time PCR
with regard to the RNaseL mutation. In agreement with earlier data,
12.9% (76 samples) were shown to be of the QQ genotype. However, XMRV
specific sequences were detected at neither the DNA nor the RNA level
and none of the 146 sera analyzed from prostate cancer patients
contained XMRV-specific antibodies. The outcome of the ongoing CFS
study will be presented at the conference.

Conclusion: Our results indicate a much lower prevalence (or even
complete absence) of XMRV in prostate tumor samples in Germany. One
possible reason for this could be a relatively recent acquisition of
the virus from a murine host and a geographically restricted incidence
of XMRV infections.

Most interesting part to me bolded. Hope someone can report back. Is this the same German group that WPI was working with? The group that found negative results intitially in prostate cancer but were willing to re-run their samples with WPI techniques?

 

[Gerwyn]

Most interesting part to me bolded. Hope someone can report back. Is this the same German group that WPI was working with? The group that found negative results intitially in prostate cancer but were willing to re-run their samples with WPI techniques?

THIS STUDY HAS BEEN PUBLISHED IN RETROVIROLOGY IN NOVEMBER 2009. THE BITS IN RED ARE THE ONLY ADDITION TO THE ORIGINAL PAPER.THE STUDY RE PROSTATE PATIENTS IS NOT A RERUN BUT A REPRESENTATION OF AN ALREADY PUBLISHED PAPER>THEY APPEAR TO BE CLAIMING THAT IT IS NEW BUT IT IS NOT

Prevalence of XMRV in prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome
patients in Germany'
O. Hohn1, K. Strohschein2, H. Krause3, R. Kurth1, C. Scheibenbogen2, N. Bannert1
1 Robert Koch-Institute, ZBS4, Berlin, Germany
2 Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Institute for Medical
Immunology, Berlin, Germany
3 Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Urology, Berlin, Germany

Background: A novel gammaretrovirus named xenotropic murine leukemia
virus-related virus (XMRV) has been recently identified and found to
have a prevalence of 40% in prostate tumor samples from US American
patients carrying a homozygous R462Q mutation in the RNaseL gene. More
recently XMRV has also been found in up to 67% of US American patients
suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) without any correlation
to the RNaseL genotype. The aim of our study is therefore the
determination of the XMRV prevalence in prostate cancer cases and in
CFS patients in Germany.

Methods: Real-time PCR was used for RNaseL genotyping of prostate
cancer samples. Highly sensitive nested PCR and RT-PCR approaches were
applied for the detection of XMRV gag sequences. Using recombinant
Gag- and Env-proteins an ELISA was developed for the detection of
anti-XMRV antibodies in human sera samples.

Results: 589 prostate tumor samples were genotyped by real-time PCR
with regard to the RNaseL mutation. In agreement with earlier data,
12.9% (76 samples) were shown to be of the QQ genotype. However, XMRV
specific sequences were detected at neither the DNA nor the RNA level
and none of the 146 sera analyzed from prostate cancer patients
contained XMRV-specific antibodies. The outcome of the ongoing CFS
study will be presented at the conference.

Conclusion: Our results indicate a much lower prevalence (or even
complete absence) of XMRV in prostate tumor samples in Germany. One
possible reason for this could be a relatively recent acquisition of
the virus from a murine host and a geographically restricted incidence
of XMRV infections.

 

[Michelle]

Kurt:

Ah, that explains it. I'm usually a day behind Co-Cure as I get the daily email digest. And people here are usually faster than Co-Cure. ;-)

Thanks for changing my spelling error.

Hope: Yes, I'm curious about that one too! Though considering their results with prostate cancer and the problems with PCR, I don't feel hopeful. :-(

Curious about that last abstract regarding rodents, probably because that's the one I understand the least.

 

[Stone]

Since this is allowed, could the post from yesterday be replaced? It was amazing and it had some information in it I really needed for my infectious disease doctor. Whaddya say?