Anna-Bella FAILLOUX will present her work on “The treat of arboviral diseases: the chikungunya in the context of climate change”, Tuesday the 2^nd of July, at 11.45 am amphitheater G1 – UCBL 50 avenue Tony Garnier 

Anna-Bella Failloux, PhD, is professor in medical entomology and chief of the unit “Arboviruses and Insect Vectors” at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Her work mainly focuses on investigations of arbovirus–mosquito interactions in order to decipher the factors leading to the viral emergence. Pr Failloux develops three complementary lines of research: (i) answering to emergence by replicating carefully the complex conditions encountered in nature (using biological material recently collected from the field, reproduce environmental conditions close to the field), (ii) deciphering molecular mechanisms underlying observations brought out from the multiple exchanges between the field and laboratory, and (iii) propose selective control strategies to mitigate insecticide-based control measures

Abstract:

Climate change and globalization of trade and travels contribute the most to the expansion of mosquito vectors and their associated pathogens. Long spared, temperate regions have had to deal with the emergence of arboviruses traditionally confined to tropical regions. Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) was first reported in Europe in 2007 during an outbreak in northern Italy, which then recurred repeatedly over the years in other European localities. The mosquito vector is the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus which was first detected in Europe in Albania in 1979 and is now established in 28 European countries. Because insects are poikilothermic ectotherms, they are highly sensitive to temperature changes, as are the pathogens they host. Environmental temperature is then, one of the most important abiotic factors influencing virus transmission.

Host: BUNYA