Plenary Lectures

Edward (Eddie) Holmes is an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, Eddie was the Verne M. Willaman Chair in the Life Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. Eddie received his undergraduate degree from the University of London (1986) and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1990). Following that, he performed postdoctoral research at the Universities of California (Davis), Edinburgh and Oxford. Between 1993-2004 he held various positions at the University of Oxford, including University Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology and Fellow of New College. His research focuses on the emergence, evolution and spread of RNA viruses, with special emphasis on revealing the genetic and epidemiological processes that underpin viral emergence, the molecular epidemiology of important human and animal pathogens, understanding the nature of global virus diversity, and the major mechanisms of virus evolution. In 2003 he was awarded the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London. In 2008 he became a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, and in 2010 he won the Faculty Scholars Medal in the Life and Health Sciences at Penn State. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2015 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017.

Abstract
Zoonotic diseases have long been a major burden on human societies and are expected to increase in frequency and impact as we interact more with the animal world and as the global population increases in size and connectedness. Fortunately, new genomic tools, particularly metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS), provide a powerful means to rapidly reveal the microbial composition of any sample without bias, provide key information on the diversity, structure and evolution of the virosphere, help determine how microbes move across the human-animal interface and the drivers of disease emergence, and reveal the origins of specific epidemics. Herein, I demonstrate the utility of mNGS for pathogen discovery and understanding disease emergence on clinically actionable timescales. In doing so, I will demonstrate how these genomic tools can form a key component to new approaches to pandemic preparedness. I will focus on the initial emergence of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) at the end of 2019, exploring why coronaviruses seem particularly able to jump species boundaries and emerge in new hosts. I will conclude by briefly outlining the ways in which we can potentially prevent pandemics like that of COVID-19 ever happening again.

Born and raised in the Galilee, Dr Hanna earned a BSc in medical sciences (2001), an MSc in microbiology and immunology, and an MD/PhD in clinical medicine (2007), all at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was among the top five percent of all Israeli medical school graduates. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Weizmann Institute in 2011.

Dr Hanna was the first non-American graduate to receive a prestigious Novartis Fellowship from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, a Genzyme-Whitehead Fellowship, and was one of 35 people under the age of 35 recognized as Young Innovators of 2010 by MIT’s Technology Review magazine. In 2010, he was awarded the Sir Charles Clore Prize for Outstanding Appointment as Senior Scientist in the Experimental Sciences at the Weizmann Institute. As an Independent Investigator, he received a European Research Council Early Career Development Award (2011), Rappaport Prize in biomedical research (2013), Krill Prize by the Wolf Foundation for outstanding research achievements (2013), and was featured in 2014 among “40 under 40” innovative scientists by the prestigious journal Cell. He is the recipient of the Kimmel award for Innovative investigation at the Weizmann Institute (2014) and an EMBO member (2017).

Lab website: http://hannalabweb.weizmann.ac.il/

Abstract
The identity of somatic and pluripotent cells can be epigenetically reprogrammed and forced to adapt a new functional cell state by different methods and distinct combinations of exogenous factors. The aspiration to utilize such ex vivo reprogrammed pluripotent and somatic cells for therapeutic purposes necessitates understanding of the mechanisms of reprogramming and elucidating the extent of equivalence of the in vitro derived cells to their in vivo counterparts. In my presentation, I will present my group’s recent advances toward understanding these fundamental questions and further detail our ongoing efforts to generate developmentally unrestricted human naive pluripotent cells. I will conclude by highlighting new avenues for utilizing epigenetic reprogramming to naïve pluripotency for unraveling critical gene regulatory mechanisms acting during early mammalian development and highlighting prospects for new platforms for human disease and developmental modelling.