Great collaboration with the group of Sander Koenraadt, @marionkoopmans.bsky.social from the #OneHealthPact and many others.

In addition, saliva from Cx. pipiens biotypes enhance WNV-induced morbidity and mortality in vivo, as well as increased dermal vascular permeability at the inoculation site. However, only Cx pipiens molestus saliva enhances WNV viremia.

🦟 Imke found that saliva from anthropophilic mosquitoes (Aedes and Cx. pipiens molestus) increases permeability of the dermal endothelium, likely due to protease(s) absent in ornithophilic Cx. pipiens pipiens.

Perfect timing! Today Danny Noack is defending his thesis on "Novel models to study #orthohantavirus infection and pathogenesis", and coincidentally the final chapter of his thesis was published today, what an achievement! #proudPI, dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

It depends on the question I suppose. I particularly like the human lung xenograft model, because it allows (for the first time) for direct comparison of HFRS and HCPS viruses in human lung tissue. The possibilities with combining with a human immune system are especially exciting!

As if writing a thesis wasn’t hard enough, Eleanor did the design and layout all by herself. Even the individual chapter pages are specifically geared towards each topic.

3/ Finally, she consolidated the clinicopathological findings obtained from human cases of WNV neuroinvasive disease and compare these with the sparse data available for human cases of USUV-related disease, to speculate on the underlying causes of the clinical differences.

2/ Next, she investigated the haematogenous routes of neuroinvasion to identify whether USUV and WNV differ in their ability to invade across the blood-brain barrier. She then used motor neurons to investigate their potential for use of transneural routes of neuroinvasion.

1/ During her PhD, Eleanor started with an overview of the neuroinvasive routes and mechanisms employed by arboviruses. She then identify whether USUV and WNV differ in their ability to infect and replicate within the brain, using a human brain slice model.

/3 Finally, he used a human lung xenograft mouse model to study the early cell tropism and host response of a range of HFRS and HCPS orthohantaviruses in human lung tissue in vivo.

/2 He then went on to develop a 3D vessel-on-chip model to investigate the effect of Puumala virus infection on endothelial cell function and response. He also studied the difference in endothelial cell responses to Seoul virus infection in the reservoir (rats) and humans.

/1 During his PhD, Danny first characterized a Puumala virus patient cohort to identify key immunological, hemostatic and kidney injury markers. Next he summarized current data on cell tropism in humans and animals, identifying key gaps in knowledge.

7/ Great collaboration between Wageningen Bioveterinary Research, Laurens Liesenborghs, ISIDORe, VetBioNet, RIVM and many others.

6/ However, given the ongoing multi-country outbreak of clade I MPXV, here we present a potential new infection and disease model that recapitulates the disease seen in the majority of human cases and can be used for preclinical evaluation of countermeasures against MPXV.

5/ Based on the acute self-limiting infection, lack of viremia, and lack of prolonged shedding as shown in this study, there is a low risk for rats to establish as a reservoir for MPXV.

4/ We showed that experimental inoculation of rats with MPXV results in an acute and self-limiting infection, characterized by a transient development of skin lesions. Infected rats also shed infectious MPXV via the respiratory tract and skin lesions.

3/ The main objective of this study was to assess the susceptibility of rats to MPXV and characterize the disease progression, viral shedding and transmission potential in an effort to understand whether rats could potentially act as (intermediate) host and become reservoirs.

2/ The detection of MPXV in waste water adds to the potential risk of brown rats, which often live in sewers, becoming a reservoir for this virus. Therefore, we revisited the 1976 observation that adult rats, but not newborns, appeared to be resistant to large doses of MPXV.