Great success for the first Annual meeting of NARILIS Infectiology Research Pole

The first Annual meeting of NARILIS Infectiology Research Pole was organized at the UNamur on November 24, 2017. This first edition was a major event for all NARILIS members involved in infectiology research.

The Infectiology Research Pole was created in May 2016 with the objective to develop more synergies between the different UNamur research units all working on topics related to infectiology, notably at the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Medicine, Veterinary medicine and Geography. An additional asset of the pole is its close connection with the Clinical Microbiology laboratory and the Department of Infectious diseases of the CHU UCL Namur - Godinne.

The program of November 24 included several aspects: the growing problem of bacterial resistance and the discovery of new antibacterial drugs, viral oncogenesis, microbial pathogenesis, the detection of pathogens and infectious diseases at the "human-animal-environment" interface.

Alongside NARILIS researchers (Prof. Stéphane Vincent, Prof. Nicolas Gillet and PhD students Isabelle Gennart, Katy Poncin and Gaston Amzati from the UNamur & Prof. Youri Glupczynski from the CHU UCL Namur), there were also several internationally renowned experts. The keynote address was given by Dr. Alain Baulard from the Institut Pasteur de Lille, who presented his outstanding work in the development of a new drug candidate able to reverse resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to ethionamide, an antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis. In addition, the audience also enjoyed excellent presentations from Prof. Tom Coenye (Ghent University, Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology), Dr. Boris Vauzeilles (Université Paris-Sud, Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d’Orsay), Dr. Simon Dellicour (KU Leuven, Evolutionary and Computational Virology), Dr. Marcella Mori (CODA-CERVA, Bacterial zoonoses of livestock) and Dr. Marc Saulmont (ARSIA).

Finally, the meeting was also a great success in view of the active participation of young researchers from the UNamur and other universities, including UCL and ULB, through poster presentations and 1-minute flash talks.

NARILIS would like to thank everyone who was involved in making this meeting a success and hopes to see everybody again at the second edition next year!