Speakers

Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
e-mail: eric.cox@slu.se

Eric Cox, graduated in 1983 as doctor in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Gent. He was appointed as assistant at the Laboratory of Veterinary Physiology at the University of Antwerp for 4 years. Then moved to the Laboratory of Veterinary Virology and Immunology of Ghent University for 3 years. Meanwhile he defended a PhD on “Experimental induction of diarrhoea in newly-weaned piglets and effect of antisecretory drugs”. In 1993, he became appointed as Assistent-professor Immunology at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and currently he is senior Full professor Immunology

In 2023 he obtained a 20% position as visiting professor at the Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

His main research topics are the intestinal mucosal immune system of animals and the interaction of pathogens with the intestinal mucosa. The most important pathogens that are studied are F4 enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) and F18 shigatoxin-producing E. coli in pigs.

Eric Cox is author or co-author of more than 280 publications in refereed journals and 6 book chapters. He has been promotor of 49 PhD theses and has given more than 150 oral presentations in national and international conferences.

Maria Letizia Di Martino studied Genomics and Biotechnologies and earned a PhD in Microbiology from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Her doctoral and post-doctoral research focused on virulence gene regulation and the impact of regulatory interactions in the optimization of the Shigella invasive programme. She also explored the impact of pathoadaptation in Shigella and enteroinvasive E.coli.

Since 2016, Maria Letizia is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology (IMBIM) at Uppsala University, associated with Mikael Sellin’s group. Here, she leads the “Shigella team” to specifically dissect Shigella molecular strategies leading to pathogenicity.

Maria Letizia studies the molecular mechanisms used by clinically relevant pathogens such as Shigella flexneri and Salmonella enterica Typhimurium during interaction with the gut epithelium, using intestinal epithelial organoids as a model. Her research combines bacterial genetics, molecular microbiology and 3D intestinal organoid models to explore host-pathogen interactions. This approach has led to the development of physiologically relevant high-thoughput methods for host-pathogen molecular studies, with broad applicability to human bacterial pathogens.

Daisy Vanrompay graduated in 1990 as doctor in Veterinary Medicine at Ghent University. She became appointed as professor in Immunology and Animal Biotechnology in 2000. D. Vanrompay is Director of the Laboratory of Immunology and Animal Biotechnology at Ghent University and Director of the National Diagnostic Reference Laboratory for C. psittaci Infections in Humans. She is a member of PROVAXS, the UGhent Center for Strategic Prophylaxis and Vaccine Development and of BlueUGENT, a research consortium for sustainable Aquaculture.

She is also a member of the UGent ‘One Health’ research consortium. Here research involves: i) the development of new molecular diagnostic methods for identifying bacterial pathogens in both humans and animals, ii) unravelling the cellular and molecular pathogenesis of bacterial infections, and iii) gaining insight in the induction of protective mucosal immunity. The laboratory focuses on Chlamydia infections in humans and animals, Escherichia coli infections in ruminants and chickens and Vibrio spp infections in aquatic animals. In vitro and in vivo models are used to study bacterium host interactions in order to develop innovative prophylactic tools such as virulence blockers, novel antimicrobials and genetic vaccines.

Daisy Vanrompay is author or co-author of over 150 papers in refereed journals and of 15 book chapters. She received 6 scientific awards and was promotor of over 40 PhD students.

Gregers Jungersen graduated in 1991 as doctor in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Copenhagen and worked as veterinary practioner in mixed practice until 1994. In 1998 he defended a PhD on “Immune responses to Ascaris suum larval migration in pigs” from University of Copenhagen. He then pursued a scientific career in immunology and vaccine research at the National Veterinary Institute where he was appointed Professor in Vaccinology in 2009 after the Institute transferred to Technical University of Denmark in 2007.

In 2019 he moved to a position as Research Professor at Statens Serum Institut (SSI) where he is heading the section for Gastro-Intestinal Vaccine Research at the Center for Vaccine Research (CVR). At SSI he has focused on development of vaccines for prevention of mucosal infections of the gut with a desire to translate the combined knowledge in veterinary and human immunology and -vaccinology into new and better vaccines for both humans and animals. The first project was aimed at neonatal vaccines against post-weaning ETEC diarrhea in pigs. He is now also WP leader in the Vax2Muc EU consortium on development of a human vaccine against Helicobacter pylori, and in the EUP Animal Health and Welfare Partnership.

Gregers Jungersen is author or co-author of close to 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals with H-index of 28.

Johan Dicksved graduated in 2002 as Master of Science in Biotechnology from Uppsala University. He started his PhD education at the Department of Microbiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and defended his PhD thesis entitled “Exploring the human intestinal microbiome in health and disease” in 2008. He continued to work at the Department of Microbiology and after a post doctoral visit in the Clinical Bacteriology group at Uppsala University, he got an Assistant professor position at the Department of Animal Nutrition and Management, SLU. Since 2023 he is a Full professor with focus on animal nutrition and metabolism of monogastric animals at the Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare.

His main research topics during his research carrier has focused on the intestinal tract and the interactions with the microbiome in various animal species. In particular focus has been how dietary compounds, pre or probiotic supplements and pathogenic bacteria have influenced the microbiome and gut mucosa.

Johan Dicksved is author or co-author of more than 75 peer review research papers and 3 book chapters.

Matthias Dierick, is a postdoctoral research associate in the stracquadanio group, working on screening internally developed AI-engineered enzyme variants expressed by CHO cells. His current focus is on the Intelligent Deimmunization of Enzyme Replacement Therapies (IDERT) project, with the goal of spearheading a new era in enzyme replacement therapies designed for lifelong treatment. This ground-breaking approach aims to address the challenges faced by patients who currently lack viable treatment options due to strong immune response.

Prior to this, Matthias graduated in 2023 as doctor in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Gent. Throughout his doctoral studies, he explored the realm of lactoferrin variants and their capacity to mitigate ETEC-induced diarrhoea in postweaning pigs. His research encompassed a variety of aspects, examining the multifunctional properties of lactoferrin variants in inhibiting bacterial growth, degradation of ETEC virulence factors and the influence of lactoferrin supplementation on both immune response and gut health.

Catherine Schouler defended her PhD in Microbiology at the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse in 1992. The subject of her thesis was the characterisation of the phi197 bacteriophage of Lactococcus lactis. She was recruited to the Institut National de Recherche Agronomiques (INRA) in 1992 as a research fellow, obtained her habilitation to direct research (HDR) in 2009 and was promoted to research director in 2015. She is now the deputy head of the JRU ISP (Infectious Diseases and Public Health). Her initial research focused on the molecular characterisation of phages and restriction-modification systems in lactococci (from 1992 to 1997 at INRA Jouy-en-Josas). Since 1998, at INRAE Val de Loire, her research has focused on the identification and characterisation of virulence and host adaptation factors in colibacilli of avian origin, on the study of the therapeutic potential of coliphages for the treatment of avian colibacillosis and now in the characterisation of the mechanisms used by Salmonella Enteritidis to establish and persist in avian ceaca.

She is the author of 58 A-rank publications, cited 2723 times, giving her an h-factor of 25.

Tim Keys studied biochemistry and molecular biology at Griffith University in Brisbane (Australia) before moving to the Hannover Medical School (Germany) for his doctoral studies. There he developed high-throughput and high-information content assays, and used them for engineering and interrogating sequence-function relationships of enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of bacterial polysaccharides.

For his postdoctoral work, Tim joined the Microbial Glycobiology group of Prof. Markus Aebi at the Institute for Microbiology, ETH Zurich (Switzerland). He pioneered the development of artificial biosynthetic pathways for the production of new-to-nature glycoproteins. These included antibody mimetics and self-assembling protein nanoparticles decorated with diverse glycans of mammalian or bacterial origin, with future applications as vaccines, therapeutics, and drug delivery vehicles.

Tim is group leader in the Mucosal Immunology Lab at ETH Zurich. His current interests are biochemical and genetic studies of E. coli’s capsular polysaccharides as well as the development of strategies for preventing disease caused by extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC).

Kurt Hanevik completed his MD in 1996 at University of Bergen and then worked with Medicins Sans Frontieres for two years in Indonesia and Afghanistan. He later became a specialist in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Haukeland University Hospital.

His PhD thesis, finished in 2012, centered on clinical and immunological aspects of protracted abdominal symptoms and fatigue after Giardia infection. In his postdoc he continued research on diarrhoeal diseases, focusing on ETEC and intestinal protozoan parasites like Giardia and Cryptosporidium. His research has contributed knowledge on T cell responses in Giardia and ETEC infection, and accuracy of a low-cost diagnostic test for Cryptosporidium.

He coordinated the development of a Controlled Human Infection Model for testing ETEC vaccine candidates and utilizes collected samples to further characterise innate and adaptive immune responses against ETEC. He also take part in projects on C. difficile treatment and fecal microbiota transplantation in irritable bowel syndrome. In 2021, he became appointed Professor at the Faculty of Medicine. Kurt Hanevik is author or co-author of around 100 publications in peer reviewed journals.

As Cross-Health platform coordinator, it is my pleasure to support you in research leading to health applications across species.
I graduated in 2009 as veterinarian and have afterwards been in contact with several facets of both human and animal medicine. From the animal perspective, I’ve worked as a veterinarian and performed translational and clinical research during my PhD at Ghent University (mono- and combination immunotherapy in dogs with spontaneous tumors). From the human perspective, I was a clinical trial advisor and project manager at Ghent University Hospital (HIRUZ) and worked in medical affairs in industry. In 2019, I started as Cross-Health platform coordinator at Ghent University.

https://www.ugent.be/voor-organisaties-en-bedrijven/en/techtransfer/iof-platforms/cross-health-platform.htm https://www.provaxs.com/team/laetitia-cicchelero

Prof. Siobhán McClean is a Principal Investigator leading a research group of 11 PhD and Postdoctoral researchers at University College Dublin. She completed her BSc in Biochemistry in University College Dublin (Ireland) and received her PhD from Imperial College, London (England). She was appointed to University College Dublin in 2016. For the past 20 years her research has focussed on bacteria that cause opportunistic lung infections and has a particular interest in understanding how bacteria adapt to the lung environment enabling chronic infections. Her interest in lung infections led her to develop a proteomic platform technology to identify proteins that bacteria use to attach to human cells. These proteins have proved to be excellent vaccine candidates. Using this approach she and her research team have identified several candidate vaccine antigens against Burkholderia pseudomallei, STEC/VTEC and more recently against three ESKAPE pathogens, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She also coordinates the All-Island Vaccine Research Alliance (AIVRT), a cross-border research network between four Universities on the island of Ireland. She has just completed coordination of a Marie Skłodowska Curie Action Innovative Training Network called BactiVax, a collaborative programme comprising 13 research teams across 8 countries.

Dr. Astrid von Mentzer is the principal investigator of the von Mentzer Lab at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. She also holds a position as a Visiting Researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute since 2021, where she continues to forge strong collaborations. Dr. von Mentzer's academic journey is marked by her profound commitment to integrating experimental biology with computational sciences, thereby enhancing the understanding of pathogenic dynamics in Eshcerichia coli.

Dr. von Mentzer established the von Mentzer Lab in 2022, focusing on exploring the species-wide dynamics and transference of virulence and antibiotic resistance genes across Escherichia coli strains. Her work significantly contributes to the field through the use of advanced genomic approaches to study the diversity and functionality of colonization factors and their associated mobile genetic elements in enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC).

Prior to founding her lab, Dr. von Mentzer was awarded two prestigious postdoctoral fellowships, which facilitated her research into the evolutionary history of ETEC at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Her doctoral work, which she completed in 2016, led to the discovery of multiple colonization factors in ETEC, highlighting her early contributions to microbial pathogenesis.

Dr. von Mentzer is also passionately involved in community outreach. She is the lead organizer of the annual Soapbox Science Event, which aims to promote women in science, thereby encouraging more female scientists to engage with the public and share their research.

Prof. Sandra Van Puyvelde is an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Medical Microbiology (University of Antwerp, Belgium). She received her MSc and PhD degree in Bioscience Engineering at the University of Leuven (Belgium). In her PhD research, she studied Salmonella Typhimurium gene regulation during biofilm formation.

After her PhD she obtained an advanced MSc degree in Statistical Data Analysis at the University of Ghent (Belgium). During her postdoc, she worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp (Belgium) and as a Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease (University of Cambridge, UK) studying invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella infections from sub-Saharan Africa using genomics approaches and in close collaboration with global partners from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Benin and others.

Prof. Van Puyvelde is a visiting researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge since 2015, collaborating with Prof. N. Thomson and Prof. G. Dougan. In her research, Prof. Sandra Van Puyvelde combines bioinformatics and molecular approaches to understand bacterial infections, their resistance to antibiotics, evolution towards invasiveness and the impact on vaccine coverage.

She is particularly interested in Salmonella and E. coli causing invasive infections. She is a member of the Belgian Young Academy since 2021, and is co-president from 2023-2025.

My long-term research goal is to relate the interactions between host and microbe to human health outcomes. Pathology is a rare outcome of bacterial interaction with the host and epidemiological studies show healthy people can harbor canonically pathogenic bacteria. Collectively, these observations suggest the phenomenon of infectious disease is contextual, nuanced, and currently misunderstood. Can we predict the health outcome of host-microbe interaction? Answering this question requires an integrative approach and will offer new principles of bacterial pathogenesis and commensalism and routes toward novel antibacterial therapeutics.

My academic training has combined conceptual frameworks of molecular, cellular, and quantitative biology to predict infection outcomes. As a PhD student working with Maggie So, I identified a molecular switch that tunes Neisseria gonorrhoeae infectivity, supporting the idea that environmental conditions can influence the likelihood of N. gonorrhoeae causing symptomatic disease. Working with Martin Ackermann, Wolf- Dietrich Hardt, and Emma Slack as a post-doc, I quantified the impact of microbiota and mucosal immune systems on Salmonella enterica infectivity, showing both of these factors influence Salmonella’s ability to induce inflammation. Going forward, the Quantitiative Infection Biology group at Loyola University Chicago will use quantitative, ecological, and molecular frameworks to better understand infectious processes and identify novel therapeutics in an era of increasing antibiotic resistance.