Editorial: Archives of Virology’s 80th anniversary symposium—6 months later

Excerpt

On the 25th November 2019, around 100 scientists from all fields of virology met to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the publication of the first issue of Archives of Virology in February 1939 [6]. The participants were treated to eleven outstanding talks covering all areas of virology. We marvelled at the complexity of African swine fever virus but were frightened by the economic losses that it generates in swine farming. We were concerned about the difficulties of the human immune system to synthesise broadly neutralising antibodies to HIV but encouraged by the success of two vaccines that had been used to control the Ebola outbreak in the Eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In the last talk, we were astonished at the sheer number of viruses identified in birds, fish and insects by Edward Holmes and his Chinese collaborators. Indeed, he estimated the number of viral species in the global eukaryotic virome to be of the order of 100 million. …