European Confederation of Medical Mycology
Confédération Européenne de Mycologie Médicale

Date: 13 and 14 November 2008
Venue: Trippenhuis, KNAW Amsterdam
Registration is free. Lunches will be available for € 12,50.
Contact: Dr. Rob Samson, r.samson@cbs.knaw.nl
Posters are welcome!

Thursday November 13, 2008

9.30 – 10.00 Registration and coffee
10.00- 10.30 Welcome and Introduction – President of the KNAW and Pedro Crous

Session 1. Fungi and our health

Nothing is closer to us than our own body. Billions of euros are spent each year to keep it healthy and free of microbes. This has worked well with bacteria, but fungi are much more difficult to combat. Some pathogenic fungi have a remarkable ability to evolve with their mammal hosts. In addition, humans made life easier for some nasty opportunists. We created polluted environments where some of these organisms proliferate better than in nature. Agricultural use of antifungal compounds, developed initially to treat infected patients, has lead to lower degrees of fungal susceptibility, thereby weakening current therapeutic strategies. Scientists are now frantically analyzing fungal genomes, in order to understand infection processes and to find weak spots in the fungal defense apparatus.

10.30 – 11.00 David Denning (Manchester): How sequencing the Aspergillus genomes helps patients with aspergillosis
11.00 – 11.30 Paul Verweij (Nijmegen): Azole resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus: collateral damage of fungicide use?
11.30 – 12.00 Sybren de Hoog (CBS): Dangerous black fungi are all around us – how come we are still alive?”
12.00 – 12.30 Jacques Guillot (Maisons-Alfort): Pneumocystis fungi and mammals: a unique model of parallel history”

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch and poster session

Session 2. Food safety

Fungi can be used for useful food products such as bread and alcoholic beverages, but they can also spoil our food and produce dangerous toxins. These mycotoxins are now found in foodproducts and beverages which have never been suspected to contain these toxins. Regulations of mycotoxins are important and the strategies are often not a balance of scientific and economical arguments.

13.30 – 14.00 GianCarlo Perrone (Bari): Innovative molecular methods for monitoring toxigenic fungi and mycotoxin in food
14.00 – 14.30 Manfred Gareis (Kulmbach): Regulation of mycotoxins
14.30 – 15.00 Noel Van Peij (Delft): Aspergillus niger genomics and biotechnology: a healthy combination !
15.00 – 15.30 Johan Schnurer (Uppsala): Domesticated microorganisms as new food biopreservatives.

15.30 – 16.00 Coffee break

Session 3. Living in Healthy Environments

Fungi in indoor environments is attracting increasing interest of the public. Much information is now available about living or working in mouldy environments. In many countries the fungal problems are still rising and the scientific data about the adverse health implications are often in contrast with information supplied by consultants and companies who have merely an economical interest.

16.00 – 16.30 Brian Flannigan (Edinburgh): Being at home with fungi: progress in understanding the impact of fungi in indoor environments on health.
16.30 – 17.00 Thomas Warscheid (Bremen): From Lascaux to Kyoto / moulds indoors and climate change.
17.00 – 17.30 Olaf Adan (Eindhoven/Delft): Moulds and water
17.30 – 18.00 Rob Samson (Utrecht): Biodiversity of indoor moulds and climate change

Friday November 14 2008.

9.45–10.00 Awarding the van Westerdijk and von Arx medals

Session 4. Culture collection, DNA Barcoding and biosecurity

This session focuses on developments in strain identification/validation of microorganisms that are key issues for biological resource collections in quality assessment and control. Secondly, it addresses the question how current community safety and security issues can affect biological resource collections in the future, and which strategies and management policies will have to be implemented in order to comply with current and expected legislation. Thirdly, it will show how genetic resources can be employed in the quest for novel bioactive compounds.

10.00 – 10.30 Erko Stackebrandt (DSMZ, Braunschweig) – The Culture of working with Cultures for Society
10.30 – 10.50 Gianluigi Cardinali (Perugia) – FT-IR based identification and classification of yeasts
10.50 – 11.10 Francoise Dromer (Paris) – MICs of yeast type strains
11.30 – 11.45 Joost Stalpers (CBS) – Biological Resource Collections and Biosecurity
11.45 – 12.00 Ursula Eberhardt (CBS) – The CBS Collections – a major resource for DNA barcode reference data -

12.00-13.00 Lunch and poster session

Session 5. Yeasts and health

Yeasts play a prominent role causing disease to humans and animals. In this symposium we will address some key issues related to fungal virulence. Among these are interactions with macrophages, melanization, adaptation to the human skin as revealed by a comparative genomics approach, and important features of the yeast cell wall, which is involved in adhesion to the human host.

13.00 – 13.30 Robin May (Birmingham) – Host immune manipulation by the fatal human pathogen Cryptococcus
13.30 – 14.00 Arturo Casadevall (New York) – New insights into the biology and virulence of Cryptococcus neoformans
14.00 – 14.30 Tom Dawson (Philadelphia) Human scalp and hair health – an eight year collaboration between CBS and P&G reveals the role of a human skin commensal
14.30 – 15.00 Piet de Groot (Amsterdam) Towards quantitative cell wall proteomic, a new era in fungal cell wall research

15.00 – 15.30 Coffee break

Session 6. Fungi and healthy Plants

According to estimates of the World Health Organization, one-third of the world’s population is well-fed, one-third is under-fed, and one-third is starving. Every year 15 million children die of hunger, while 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Although there are several causes for this, fungi play an important role as causal agents of plant disease. Furthermore, inadvertent introductions of phytopathogenic fungi have dire consequences to nature and cultivated crops. To combat these diseases on an international scale, it is important to clarify whether the same species and genotypes occur in various countries, since each different species and genotype can be expected to have different patterns of attack, as well as different responses to fungicides and to climatological conditions. With such pathogens, it is also important to know what their host ranges and mating strategies are, and how this relates to different disease control mechanisms.

15.30 – 16.00 Zakkie Pretorius (Bloemfontein): Old pathogens, new challenges: stem rust of wheat
16.00 – 16.30 Peter Bonants (Wageningen): DNA barcoding of phytopathogens at ports of entry: a workable solution?
16.30 – 17.00 Ariena van Bruggen (Wageningen): Organic food and fungal pathogens
17.00 – 17.30 Bruce Fitt, Rothamsted): Climate change and emerging diseases