Succesfull PhD trip to the American Society for Virology meeting in Ohio

This summer, we, a group of PhD students from the laboratory of Virology, had the opportunity to attend the annual meeting of the American Society for Virology (ASV) in Columbus, Ohio which we followed up with a PhD trip!

We first shared our research projects through talks and posters during the ASV on a variety of topics including:
·       Flavivirus studies in mice and mosquitoes
·       The baculovirus expression system
·       Synthetic biology

After an exciting week at the ASV meeting, we drove to Washington to visit several companies and institutes in our fields. 

Our first stop was Miltenyi Biotec, where we got tours of their R&D, manufacturing, and warehouse from Dale Allen, Jenice D'Costa and Sofia Byrne. The highlight was seeing their GMP facilities where life-saving CAR T-cell therapies are produced.

The next day we visited The National Institutes of Health headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland where Kenny Vu showed us around the campus and its impressive labs. We then visited the lab of Dr. Stephen Whitehead where we presented our work and Stephen shared his impressive 20-year long research on Dengue virus which cumulated to a vaccine currently going in production worldwide!

The next stop was the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research where we were welcomed by Dr. Dominic Esposito. We had fruitful discussions about protein production using the baculovirus expression vector system. During the lab tour, we were amazed by the number of bioreactors they possess.

After celebrating the 4th of July in Washington, we visited The Johns Hopkins University, where Dr. Anthony K. L. Leung showed us his lab and introduced us to other research groups, including the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, where we saw genetically modified mosquitoes.

After all the amazing visits in Washington, we continued our journey to Boston. Here we were invited to take a look at the state-of-the-art facilities of GINGKO by Brandon Lam. We were extremely impressed by their high-tech lab equipment, which ranged from acoustic liquid handling to fully automated assays with plates on rails.

Finally, we finished our PhD trip at the famed Church Lab at Harvard Medical School. Here we met with Dr. Akos Nyerges with whom we had great discussions about our projects. We were blown away by Akos' knowledge and interest in each of our research topics and he gave us some great new ideas.

In three weeks, we gained valuable insights, expanded our network, and learned how research is translated into real-world applications. We extend our gratitude to the scientists who hosted us and to our sponsors --University Fund Wageningen (LEB Travel Fund and Rob Goldbach Fund), De Uyttenboogaart-Eliasen Stichting, PE&RC Graduate school, and Wageningen University & Research -- for making this trip possible.