NAmur Research Institute for LIfe Sciences
Thomas Balligand
Targeted cancer and antiviral therapy
Designing nanobody and lectin conjugates to specifically target and deliver therapeutic payloads to cancer and/or virus-infected cells
Prof. Thomas Balligand MD, PhD
UNamur, Department of medicine, Molecular Physiology Research Unit (URPhyM)
Research portal UNamur | ORCID | ResearchGate | LinkedIn
Expertise and research interests
Thomas Balligand trained as an MD and started his junior residency in internal medicine at the UCLouvain in Brussels, Belgium. As a med student, he was already interested in fundamental research. This led him to start a PhD at the de Duve Institute in the lab of Prof. Stefan Constantinescu. He worked on myeloproliferative neoplasms driven by CALR mutations. During this time, he acquired many different skills pertaining to research in life sciences, published several papers, participated in international collaborations and had many opportunities to present his work at international conferences.
By the end of his PhD, his love for science and attraction for a career in research had kept expanding. This led him to become a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Hidde Ploegh at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in Boston, MA, USA. There, he worked on designing small antibody fragments, termed "nanobodies", as tools to improve the treatment of different types of diseases, including influenza and cancers among others. He has also acquired extensive experience in the design of nanobody-based radiotracers for PET/CT imaging in in vivo models.
Since October 2024, he holds the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Namur, where he teaches Histology and Cellular biology to medical, pharmaceutical, biomedical and veterinary students. In parallel with his teaching duties, he leads a research group focused on the design and production of nanobody and lectin conjugates that can specifically target cancer or virus-infected cells in order to perform targeted drug delivery.
Group members
Technician: Valérie De Glas
Research projects
Selected publications
Liu X, Balligand T, Le Gall C, Ploegh HL. A monoclonal anti-hemagglutinin stem antibody modified with zanamivir protects against both influenza A and B viruses. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Apr 15;122(15):e2424889122.
Ploegh H, Liu X, Le Gall C, Alexander R, Borgman E, Balligand T. Bi-specific antibody engagers for cancer immunotherapy. Res Sq [Preprint]. 2024 Aug 1:rs.3.rs-4792057.
Liu X, Balligand T, Carpenet C, Ploegh HL. An armed anti-immunoglobulin light chain nanobody protects mice against influenza A and B infections. Sci Immunol. 2023 Jun 23;8(84):eadg9459.
Balligand T, Achouri Y, Pecquet C, Gaudray G, Colau D, Hug E, Rahmani Y, Stroobant V, Plo I, Vainchenker W, Kralovics R, Van den Eynde BJ, Defour JP, Constantinescu SN. Knock-in of murine Calr del52 induces essential thrombocythemia with slow-rising dominance in mice and reveals key role of Calr exon 9 in cardiac development. Leukemia. 2020 Feb;34(2):510-521.
