NaRePI success story: interdisciplinary collaboration between chemist Stéphane Vincent & microbiologist Xavier De Bolle

The Namur Research Pole in Infectiology (NaRePI) brings together researchers from diverse fields such as microbiology, cell biology, veterinary medicine, medicinal chemistry and spatial epidemiology. This dynamic network generates an important potential for interdisciplinary research initiatives. An example of this collaborative spirit is the fruitful partnership between Prof. Stéphane Vincent, expert in bio-organic chemistry and glycoscience, and Prof. Xavier De Bolle, microbiologist focusing on Brucella, a pathogenic bacteria responsible for a worldwide zoonosis called brucellosis. 

Stéphane Vincent leads a research group conducting mechanistic and inhibition studies of essential enzymes involved in bacterial cell wall biosynthesis and host colonization. Meanwhile, Prof. Xavier De Bolle leads a team dedicated to unravelling the molecular mechanisms that govern Brucella abortus cell cycle during infection. 

By combining their respective expertise, they developed a metabolic glycoengineering approach to chemically modify the surface of Brucella abortus using synthetic mannose analogues. Mannose is a sugar naturally found in Brucella bacterial cell envelope, more precisely in the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) core, a key virulence factor. The metabolic incorporation of “clickable” mannose analogues into the bacterial membrane offers a powerful tool to study host-pathogen interactions and opens new avenues for identifying new targets to block infection. 

The results of this collaboration have just been published in ACS Chemical Biology (June 2025): “Site-Specific Incorporation of Clickable d-Mannose Derivatives in the Lipopolysaccharide Core of the Pathogen Brucella abortus.”

This research was conducted as part of the doctoral project of Marine Lacritick, who successfully defended her thesis end 2024: “Clickable mannose analogues: powerful tools to label the bacterial cell wall via Metabolic Glycoengineering and to synthesize sugar nucleotides for antibody functionalization.”

This project highlights how combining expertise across disciplines can drive innovative advances in infectious disease research.

Stéphane Vincent : www.narilis.be/research-group/stephane-vincent

Xavier De Bolle : www.narilis.be/research-group/xavier-de-bolle

NaRePI: www.narilis.be/narepi