The Options for the Control of Influenza meeting in Singapore, or Option X, was held a few days ago in the Lion City. This key event welcomes every three years more than 1500 influenza and public health specialists.
HKU-Pasteur’s teams were once again well represented during this major event to showcase their essential work, starting with Malik Peiris, Co-director at HKU-Pasteur, who gave an opening keynote lecture the first day untitled Pandemic and Seasonal Influenza: The Known Unknowns, and our researchers with several poster presentations:
Sophie Valkenburg’s team presented 3 posters: Sophie with Assessing Antibody Function In Responses To Twice-Annual Vaccination Due To 2014/2015 H3N2 Antigenic Mismatch In Hong Kong, Athena Li with Enhanced Annual Influenza Vaccination Strategies Generate Higher Quality Immune Responses In Older Adults and Maireid Bull with Investigation Of T Cell Immune Pressure On The Influenza Genome Within A Universal Vaccination Model.
Chris Mok, presented the poster Establishment Of Avian Influenza Virus/Acinetobacter Baumannii Co-Infection Model In Mice, and his Research Assistant Tomas Lyu presented their work that gave a major publication in Cell Host & Microbe in June 2019, Preventing An Antigenically Disruptive Mutation In EGG-Based H3N2 Seasonal Influenza Vaccines By Mutational Incompatibility.
Gabriel Leung, Dean of Medicine, HKU, attended the closing plenary talk with the lecture Mitigating Against Geopolitical Determinants of Global Public Health and Envisioning Counterfactual Futures for Outbreak Preparedness and Response.
This Options X was a great event and a truly essential meeting to further advance the global fight against Influenza. We will still be there in three years in Milan for the next edition!
From left to right: Ian Wilson (Scripps Research), Tomas Lyu, Nicholas Wu (Scripps Research), Chris Mok, co-authors of the Preventing An Antigenically Disruptive Mutation In EGG-Based H3N2 Seasonal Influenza Vaccines By Mutational Incompatibility publication.
Niloufar Kavian and Sophie Valkenburg.