Presented by: Richard Whitley. The University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL, USA.

At the time of writing, this year’s ICAAC meeting in San Francisco has not yet happened. However, the abstracts which have been accepted for presentation are now available on the ICAAC website, and indicate that new data in our field will be presented. Among the highlights is a study showing for the first time that famciclovir effectively suppresses shedding of herpes simplex virus (HSV)-2. The presentation by Peter Leone demonstrates that HSV-2-seropositive symptomatic patients who received famciclovir 250mg twice daily for 42 days in a crossover study had significantly less overall shedding, both sub-clinical and clinical. Lawrence Stanberry will show that, while the proof of principle of therapeutic HSV vaccines is well established, an effective therapeutic vaccine for HSV remains elusive. The development of the two prophylactic subunit HSV vaccines will be reviewed.

There will be several posters covering herpesvirus infections, including one on HSV encephalitis showing that early and short-course administration of glucocorticoids results in neuroprotection and increased survival in a mouse model of HSV-1 encephalitis. Several posters investigating CMV infections are included in the meeting, and I hope to be able to review some of these data with you.

I hope that you will join us at the Novartis-sponsored symposium at the IHMF^® to hear my report of these data and to enjoy the other presentations in this session.