Interview with Prof. Daniel Candotti: viewing the old virus from a new perspective

On July 14, 2017, the Guangzhou Blood Safety Conference successfully ended, after a 2-day scientific and compact agenda. The event took place in Guangzhou, a beautiful city located in South China. With the presence of prestigious local and foreign experts from fields of blood safety, epidemiology, etc., the meeting was dedicated to providing comprehensive-in-depth, detailed overview of new, controversial, challenging themes, advances, and inspirations in blood safety.

During the conference, we were honored to conduct an interview with Prof. Daniel Candotti, a Senior Research Scientist and the Deputy Head of the Department of Blood Transmissible Agents from the National Institute of Blood Transfusion (INTS), Paris, France (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Editor Miss Gin Li, Prof. Daniel Candotti, Editor Jessie Zhong.

Prof. Candotti gave an excellent presentation in the conference on the topic “HBV transfusion transmission despite the use of highly sensitive HBV NAT” (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Snapshot of Prof. Candotti’s presentation.

During the interview, Prof. Daniel Candotti introduced to us some researches on HBV in field of blood transfusion, and shared his perspectives on the blood transfusion safety. As an important issue in Africa and Southeast Asia, HBV is a hot but familiar virus to us, which has long been studied in the medical field. Vaccine and treatment have been produced to prevent it. Nevertheless, when people look deeper, they will realize they know little about HBV actually. Prof. Candotti said, “The hepatitis B infection is a lifelong process, which means that people may naturally never clear it as long as they are infected. Vaccines are efficient to prevent disease, but may not be so efficient to prevent (re)-infection with different HBV genotypes. Another situation is that some viruses still escape in the transfusion transmission despite the use of highly sensitive tests. Nevertheless, the good news is the number of people who are infected is lower than what we expect.”

When asked about the future of pathogens screening, Prof. Candotti thought that it depended on what emergence we are going to see in the future. There will be some seasonal problems, for example, in the past years, Zika and Ebola. Some additional tests are required in a short period to face these seasonal problems, but in the near future, it’s quite reassuring and no massive serious viral threat seems to emerge currently even if we have to keep attention on hepatitis e virus and dengue.

At the end of the interview, he also shared his research experiences with young experts in the field. He considered it important to view things from different perspectives, especially new perspectives. People have to be ready to use new technology, such as next generation sequencing and deep sequencing. Also, people should concentrate on potential emerging or re-emerging infections including unusual animal viruses and especially arboviruses based on changing movement of population, climate change and so on. He strongly advised to think in terms of different levels. “Do not only focus on one side, and instead, expand knowledge outside transfusion.”

Let’s enjoy the interview video (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Interview with Prof. Daniel Candotti: viewing the old virus from a new perspective (1). Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/1667

Interview questions

• First, would you please give us a brief introduction to yourself, including your specialities and interests?
• HBV has long been studied in the medical field. What issues/studies are hot on HBV in field of blood transfusion?
• You did an excellent presentation yesterday. Could you summarize some main points of your presentation to us?
• More and more items are included in the screening of blood donors, for example, HTLV, WNV and Zika in America. Do you think there will be more pathogens included for blood donor screening?
• You’ve served in blood transfusion safety field for almost 20 years. Based on your rich experience, do you have particular words to our readership or those who are going to study in this field?

Expert introduction

Prof. Daniel Candotti is a senior research scientist and deputy head of the Department of Blood Transmissible Agents, National Institute of Blood Transfusion (INTS), Paris, France. He received his PhD degree in Virology in the Pierre & Marie Curie University (Paris VI), Paris, France. Prof. Candotti acquired an extensive experience in molecular virology and blood-borne virus infections working for the AIDS Research National Agency (ANRS), Laboratory of Virology, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, France, and in the Division of Transfusion Medicine, Department of Haematology, University of Cambridge, and National Health Service Blood & Transplant, Cambridge, UK.

Prof. Candotti is engaged in scientific researches in blood safety and transfusion-transmitted viral infections. His research work is essentially focused on molecular epidemiology and molecular mechanisms of host-pathogens interaction in persistent viral infections, mainly HBV, in blood donors. He has published more than 80 scientific papers and served in the blood transfusion safety field for 17 years.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Annals of Blood for the series “Meet the Professor”. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/aob.2017.08.03). The series “Meet the Professor” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. The authors report that they are full-time employees of AME Publishing Company. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

References

1. Hu S, Li G. Interview with Prof. Daniel Candotti: viewing the old virus from a new perspective. Asvide 2017;4:353. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/1667

(Science Editor: Shuxin Hu, Gin Li, AOB, aob@amegroups.com)