Cell News 1/2015
26
Meeting Report
Report of the Workshop “Cell Biology of Viral Infections”
Steeve Boulant and Claudia Claus
Dr. Steeve Boulant (Heidelberg) and Dr. Claudia Claus (Leipzig) took on the task of organizing the
13
th
annual workshop on “Cell Biology of Viral Infection”. This year’s conference was no longer held
at the traditional site of Ketschauer Hof in Deidesheim but was moved to the Kloster Schöntal
in Schöntal, Germany. The participants were all very enthusiastic about the location change and
enjoyed being able to stay directly at the conference site, and having evening gatherings and wine
tasting in the cellar. The very active, lively and interested participations of the attendees during the
seminar sessions had a very positive impact on the course of this year’s meeting, which, from the
beginning to the end, was a real success for us.
The theme of this year’s workshop was "Mimicking Organ Physiology: Impact of Stem Cells and
Tissue Engineering on Virology". This topic was chosen to help advance the current classical culture
systems used by virologist. The workshop was held from the 19
th
-21
st
of November and we were very
happy to have four keynote lecturers, which are leaders in the field of stem cell biology. The work-
shop was opened with a fantastic lecture by Dr. Micha Drukker on the "Fate Choice of Pluripotent
Stem Cells". Dr. Drukker is the head of the research group "Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Lineage
Choice Research" at the Institute for Stem Cell Research at the Helmholtz Zentrum München. Since
most participants were from a virology background, Dr. Drukker gave a nice introduction to the
field of pluripotent stem cells. He also showed exciting data from his lab demonstrating the post-
transcriptional changes of transcription factors, which leads to exiting a pluripotent state and how
they were able to identify surface markers to differentiate stem cells subtypes. Finally, he described
the recently unraveled phenomenon of paraspeckles, which marks cells that have undergone dif-
ferentiation.
The following day, two fabulous lectures from Prof. Petra Boukamp and Prof. Catherine Verfaillie
gave us detailed examples to obtain specific organ cultures close to physiology from stem cells.
First, Prof. Petra Boukamp from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) discussed "Goodbye Flat
Biology: the Role of the Microenvironment in Normal Human Skin and Skin Cancer". She described
beautifully the years of work from her lab showing the development of a 3D human skin cell model.
They found that mice are unable to substitute as a model due to their drastically different tissue or-
ganization. Additionally, she showed that a 2D culture system is also not sufficient and a 3D struc-
ture is essential for the skin growth because a layered organization is needed. This layered structure
allows for the expression of growth factors in the proper time and space. This elegant model has
then been used to answer questions about skin regeneration, and how cancer can develop and vas-
cularize in skin tissue. Next, Prof. Catherine Verfaillie of the Stem Cell Institute of the University of
Leuven in Belgium discussed "Creating and Engineering Hepatocytes from Pluripotent Stem Cells".
Prof. Verfaille’s research group is using many state-of the art techniques to genetically modify and
visualize stem cells. This has allowed for the generation of a hepatocyte culture model from stem
cells, which was of particular interest to many hepatitis virologist in the audience. The final day was
concluded with a lecture from Prof. Ian Chambers from the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine
at the University of Edinburgh on "Transcription Control of Pluripotent Cell States". His group was
the first to discover Nanog, which is a key factor for the maintenance of stem cell pluripotency. He
discussed the impressive work from his lab in unraveling the expression patterns of proteins, which
regulate the process of self-renewal and cell differentiation.
This year’s workshop was attended by 32 participants coming from most regions in Germany and
also from Bordeaux, France. The majority of participants were virology students and post-doctoral
fellows. The participants gave presentations on three virology themes: "Virus-Host Interactions",
"Virus in 3D Culture Model" and "Virus Assembly and Replication". These presentations covered
a large variety of RNA and DNA viruses and discussed topics from virus entry, and replication to
