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K-State Today

January 11, 2018

Rowland Lab organizes international swine disease meeting in Chicago

Submitted by Joe Montgomery

The 2017 North American Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Symposium was Dec. 2-3 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Chicago. The conference, which was initiated in 2004, features the latest research on PRRS along with emerging and foreign swine diseases. The conference hosted 251 registered attendees from 22 countries.

Special sessions included a Friday afternoon workshop on Global Disease Challenges, followed by a Saturday session on The Genetics of Disease Resistance: Research Updates and a Vision for the Future. Both sessions featured talks by experts from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. Saturday evening included a reception, which included 68 poster presentations.

The College of Veterinary Medicine was well-represented with 25 attendees who presented eight talks and authored or co-authored 27 of the 68 abstracts.

"Even though the CVM represented 1 percent of the number of attendees, it contributed to 30 percent of the science," Bob Rowland said.

Ying Fang presented a talk titled, "Emerging swine disease diagnostics and characterization: connecting basic research to real-world applications."

Megan Niederwerder was invited to present an update on the risk of introducing African swine fever virus through the importation of feed. Rowland presented a talk titled, "PRRS overview and description of disease phenotypes and models for genetic research."

Student-travel fellowships were awarded to Ana Stoian, Pengcheng Shang, Laura Constance, Shehnaz Lokhandwala, Vlad Petrovan, Yanhua Li and Luca Popescu. The College of Veterinary Medicine, Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, Kansas NBAF Transition fund and K-State Institute for Commercialization hosted a morning session on the latest research developments on swine diseases. In addition to Rowland, executive director, other members of the organizing committee representing the college were Francine Rowland, proceedings editor, and Maureen Sheahan, meeting assistant.

The following College of Veterinary Medicine students/postdocs/faculty also made oral presentations at the conference:

  • Shehnaz Lokhandwala, "Adenovirus-vectored novel African Swine Fever Virus multi-antigen cocktail elicit strong but non-protective immune responses in commercial pigs."
  • Megan Niederwerder, "Fecal microbiota transplantation improves outcome in nursery pigs following co-infection with porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus and porcine circovirus type 2d."
  • Pencheng Shang, "Double-stranded viral RNA persists in vitro and in vivo during prolonged infection of PRRSV."
  • Ana Stoian, "CD163 PSTII domain is required for PRRSV-2 infection."
  • Yanhua Li, "A dual ribosomal frameshifting mechanism transactivated by an arterivirus protein and host cellular factors."