Meeting report: 29th International Conference on Antiviral Research in La Jolla, CA, USA

The 29th International Conference on Antiviral Research (ICAR) was held in La Jolla, CA, USA from April 17 to 21, 2016. This report opens with a tribute to the late Chris McGuigan, a Past-President of ISAR, then continues with summaries of the principal invited lectures. Doug Richman (Elion Award) investigated HIV resistance, Bob Vince (Holý Award) showed how carbocyclic nucleoside analogs led to abacavir and Jerome Deval (Prusoff Award) explained how his group chose to seek a nucleoside analog to treat RSV. ALS-8176 was active in a human RSV-challenge study and is being evaluated in children. The first keynote address, by Richard H. Scheuermann, reported on the remarkable progress made in viral genomics. The second keynote address, by Heinz Feldmann, gave an overview of Ebola virus disease. There were four mini-symposia, Structural Biology, Diagnostic Technologies, DNA viruses and Zika virus. Diagnostic assays are approaching an ideal aim, a compact instrument, simple to use with any type of sample, no sample preparation and a result within an hour. The diversity of HCMV is far greater than for other herpesviruses, typically, an individual having >20,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). During antiviral treatment, there is rapid CMV evolution which is presumed to be due to preferential selection of already present variants rather than by the creation of new variants. A selection of contributor presentations includes oral prodrugs for nucleoside triphosphate analogs, a new method for the synthesis of phosphoramidate prodrugs and the clinical evaluation of brincidofovir for treating transplant recipients with adenovirus infections.