SAMUEL PESSOA CONFERENCE
Title: Feast or Poison? How Blood-Feeding Arthropods Tame the Toxicity of Massive Meals
Pedro Lagerblad (UFRJ – RJ – Brazil)

CLOSING CONFERENCE
Title: What DNA Replication Tells Us, So Far, About the Biology of Trypanosoma cruzi”
Carolina Elias (Butantan Institute – SP – Brazil)

CONFERENCES

1. Rogério Amino (Institut Pasteur – France)
Title: A novel type of Plasmodium division

2. Marcelo Urbano (USP – SP – Brazil)
Title: Plasmodium simium: origin and evolution of a reverse zoonosis

3. Otavio Thieman (USP – São Carlos – Brazil)
Title: Synchrotron Light: can it help my research?

4. Julia Cunha (Instituto Butantan – SP – Brazil)
Title: Beyond the Genetic Code: Insights into Trypanosome Epigenome on Gene Regulation

5. Patricia Silva Romano (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo – Argetina)
Title: The role of autophagy in the Trypanosoma cruzi life cycle: Adding pieces to the puzzle

6. To be Confirmed

7. María Adelaida Gómez (CIDEI – Colombia)
Title: The conundrum of persistent Leishmania infection and exacerbated inflammation, how do these co-exist?

8. Noelia Lander (University of Cincinnati – USA)
Title: Defining the role of cAMP compartments in the specificity of cellular responses in Trypanosoma cruzi

9. To be Confirmed

10. Nathan Peters (University of Calgary – Canada)
Title: Altered Monocyte Recruitment Following Challenge Infection With Non-Healing Strains Of Leishmania Abrogates Protective Th1 Immunity

ROUND-TABLES

1- RECENT ADVANCES TOWARDS VACCINE DEVELOPMENT FOR MALARIA, LEISHMANIOSE AND CHAGAS DISEASE

a. Ana Paula Fernandes (UFMG – MG – Brazil)

b. Santuza M. Teixeira (UFMG – MG – Brazil)
Title: T. cruzi virulence factors and new developments towards a Chagas disease vaccine

c. Eric Dummonteil (Tulane University – USA)
Title: Immunotherapy of Trypanosoma cruzi chronic infection with a therapeutic vaccine

d. Irene Soares (USP – SP – Brazil)
Title: Preclinical evaluation of a multi-allelic CSP-based vaccine candidate against Plasmodium vivax.

2- DRUG DEVELOPMENT AND RESISTANCE

a. Michael Barrett (University of Glasgow – UK)

b. Pieter Steketee (Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh – UK)

c. Marcia Graminha (UNESP Araraquara – Brazil)

d. Juliana Quero Reimão (Faculdade de Medicina de Jundiai, Brazil)
Title: Preclinical research of novel therapeutic options for toxoplasmosis: from in silico screening to animal testing

3- Host-Protozoa Interaction

a. Catarina Gadelha (University of Nottingham – UK)

b. Julio César Carrero (Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas – UNAM – MEX)
Title: DNA traps and extracellular vesicles: double-edged swords of neutrophil immunity during confrontation with Entamoeba histolytica.

c. Elena Jimenez (LMU München – Germany)
Title: Two Keys to the Engine: Methylation Control of Gliding Initiation in Apicomplexa

d. Ulisses Lopes (UFRJ – RJ – Brazil)
Title: Detection of Leishmania and sand fly borne viruses coinfection in dogs and studies of the role of the phlebovirus Non-structural protein N (NSs) in Leishmania infection.

4- DIVERSITY, ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION OF FREE-LIVING PROTISTS AND THEIR VIRUSES

a. Thiago da Silva Paiva (UFRJ – RJ – Brazil)
Title: Mosaics of convergent evolution: understanding the natural history of Hypotricha (Ciliophora: Spirotrichea)

b. Laura Utz (PUC – RS – Brazil)
Title: Diversity of microbial communities in aquatic and terrestrial environments

c. Jonatas Abrahao (UFMG – MG – Brazil)
Title: The limits of the virosphere: a Journey into the World of Giant Viruses of Amoebas

d. To be Confirmed

5- VECTORS

a. Georgia Atella (UFRJ – RJ – BRA)
Title: Lipid Flow from Vectors to Parasites: An Unexplored Cascade of Biochemical Mechanisms

b. Jack Sunter (Oxford Brookes University – UK)
Title: Dissection of Leishmania parasite adhesion in the sand fly vector

c. Pedro Cecílio (NIAID-NIH – USA)

d. José Roberto da Silva (UFRJ – RJ – BRA)
Title: Heme as a player in the control of hemoglobin digestion in Rhodnius prolixus

6- HOST DEFENSES AGAINST PROTOZOA

a. Silvia Boscardin (USP – SP – Brazil)
Title: Directing the Plasmodium vivax 19kDa merozoite surface protein (MSP1 19 ) to two distinct dendritic cell subpopulations through prime-boost vaccination strategies.

b. Walderez Dutra (UFMG – MG – Brazil)
Title: Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals subset-specific immune signatures and unusual imune-cell populations differentiating asymptomatic and cardiac Chagas disease patients

c. Luiz Gustavo Gardinassi (USP – MG – Brazil)
Title: Gut microbes are associated with immune and metabolic responses to Plasmodium vivax malaria

d. Tiago Mineo (UFU – MG – Brazil)
Title: CRISPR/Cas9 genomic edition in the context of the Neospora caninum-host relationship