Coronavirus-associated acute respiratory disease, called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). COVID-19, in its severe form, presents with an uncontrolled, hyperactive immune response and severe immunological injury. Currently, there are limited clinically-tested treatments of COVID-19 with disparities in the apparent efficacy in patients. By adapting recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV)-driven gene therapy to deliver human ACE2 to the lungs of MISTRG6 mice, we present a comprehensively humanized mouse COVID-19 model that faithfully recapitulates the innate and adaptive human immune responses during infection with SARS-CoV-2. This humanized mouse model carries key features characteristic of chronic COVID-19: prolonged disease duration, chronic weight loss, persistent viral RNA and lung pathology with fibrosis, the mounting of a human innate and adaptive immune response and specifically the inflammatory macrophage response, and persistent IFN-driven gene signature. Although early IFN deficiency leads to enhanced disease, blocking either viral replication with Remdesivir or the downstream IFN stimulated cascade by injecting anti-IFNAR2 in vivo in the chronic stages of disease attenuates many aspects of the overactive immune-inflammatory response, especially the inflammatory macrophage response, and most consequentially, the chronic disease itself. 	

A humanized model of Covid-19: Lessons on mechanisms of pathogenesis

Exploring the intricacies of host-pathogen communication is vital in order to understand why
some microbes persist within a host, while others are effectively cleared. As such,
host-pathogen communication is an urgent area of research underpinning human health
and disease, especially given the emerging concerns of antibiotic resistance.
Understanding host-pathogen pathways requires intricate knowledge in the fields of both
microbiology and immunology.

Living in a world of specialists, where scientists sometimes invest their whole career
studying one organism, a specific pathway or a protein, multidisciplinary discussions of
host-pathogen interactions are highly needed. This international conference will provide
such a forum for scientific exchange at the highest level, between scientists from different
research areas related to host-pathogen interactions, with the aim to trigger fruitful
collaborations addressing the urgent questions in the field.

This meeting has an additional special focus of bringing researchers from Ireland, Denmark
and Israel together to learn about cutting edge biology and form new collaborations.
Thus, the conference will be a showcase for the exciting and original research emanating
from these three small but innovative countries.

Host-Pathogen Communication (HPC) 2021

NLPR3 and the gut-lung axis of immune regulation regulate susceptibility to pneumococcal pneumonia

A Crohn's disease-associated pathobiont synergise with NSAID to promote inflammation and cell death in susceptible host via the caspase-8/NLRP3 axis

Early or Late Bacterial Lung Infection Increases Mortality After Traumatic Brain Injury in Male Mice and Chronically Impairs Monocyte Innate Immune Function