11th Annual Meeting, France 2017

During the 11^th EPIZONE Annual Meeting more than 230 delegates; EPIZONE scientists, partners from industry and Animal Health policy makers, met from 19 to 21^st of September 2017. The venue of the meeting was in the Cité des Science et de l’ índustrie (Science Centre) located in the friendly Parc de la Vilette, in the north of Paris. These were the nice surroundings in sunny Paris where the scientific meeting provided plenty of opportunity to exchange the latest outputs of research on epizootic diseases presented by the partner institutes of the Research Group. The joyful and invaluable EPIZONE Annual Meeting was very well organised by the host of this year, ANSES.

Day one/Young EPIZONE day

While more than 50 young scientists enjoyed lectures and training on scientific research communication, the networks Coordinating Forum discussed ERG management issues. See programme Young EPIZONE and Young EPIZONE info.

Coordinating Forum ERG management issues:

Meetings

• The next (12^th) EPIZONE Annual Meeting will be held in in Vienna Austria in August 2018, in the week of 27-31^st of September. This time our scientific meeting will be a session within the ESVV meeting. Final dates have not been fixed yet but will be put on the website as soon as possible. The venue will most likely be at the veterinary faculty of Vienna University. The new organizing committee and scientific committee will be installed as soon as possible.
• Another EPIZONE session will be organized during the EAVLD Congress in Brussels 14-17 October 2018. The provisional title of this session is: ‘Diagnostics for epizootic diseases’. Contact person for this meeting is Thierry van den Berg.
• Since less risk assessment research was presented during the last few EPIZONE meetings it is suggested to organise a workshop on risk assessment. The EPIZONE admin office will explore this, i.e contact Profs. Mart de Jong and Arjan Stegeman and Yves van der Stee, Ana de La Torre. (April/May 2018?)

Short term missions

• There is budget available for more scientific missions and courses. Efforts will be made to encourage Short term missions (STMs). To encourage scientific missions a presentation about the scientific missions arrangements was done at the YE meeting. For more information STM, see website here.

Research proposals

• The One Health proposal (SFS - 37.[2017]: Co-fund on "One Health" was awarded and will start at the beginning of 2018.
• The VALIDIA proposal ( SFS – 13. [2016 -> 2017!]: Validation of diagnostic tools for animal and crop health) which included EPIZONE partners was not awarded.
• The ControlASAP (SFS-10-2017) proposal was submitted (round 2) last September
• In the new H2020 work program there is at least one call topic which is really within the EPIZONE scope: SFS-12-2019: A vaccine against African Swine Fever. EPIZONE partners are interested in this call topic.

Second day of the meeting

After a welcome session with short presentations of the EPIZONE coordinator Wim van der Poel, the chairs of the organising committee Stephan Zientara and Marie-Frédérique LePotier and Pascale Duché of the scientific board of ANSES our hosting partner. This was followed by the scientific presentations including the keynote speakers and the abstract presentations in two parallel sessions. In the breaks and after the sessions there was time for poster viewing and for meeting colleagues. In the evening the social event started with a beautiful 3D movie shown in the Centre Geodé about ocean life. Thereafter French cheese and wine completed the social event and marked the start for lots of talking with colleagues and friends throughout the Paris night.

Third Day

Although it may have been late, almost all delegates also attended the next day the scientific presentations from the start. Programme 11th AM

Two scientists were awarded for best poster presentations:

• Ann Sofie Oleson of VET-DTU was rewarded with the Ingenasa Young EPIZONE poster prize. Title of the poster: ‘Whole-genome next generation sequencing of African swine fever virus in blood samples obtained from experimentally infected pigs’. Pdf poster
• and Alexandra Hübner, FLI, was rewarded with the EPIZONE Meeting poster prize. Title of the poster: ‘CRISPR/Cas9-mediated inhibition of pseudorabies virus and African swine fever virus replication in cell culture’. Pdf poster

• Photos 11th AM
• Keynote presentations
• Abstract book