Monday, October 15, 2018

2nd International Blastocystis Conference Wrap-Up - Part I

The 2nd International Blastocystis Conference has been completed with great success. It was a very worthy sequel to the first conference in Ankara back in 2015, attracting about 100 delegates.


The Scientific Committee (image above) consisted of Prof Funda Dogruman-Al (main organiser of the 1st International Blastocystis Symposium), Senior Scientist Rune Stensvold, and Associate Prof Juan-David Ramírez González, who also headed the local organising committee (LOC; image below).



We are all very thankful to Juan-David and his colleagues, the entire LOC, the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá and La Fontana Hotel, which provided an excellent framework with premium facilities.


The Faculty can be seen on the image below. From left to right, it's Rodolfo Casero, [Magdalena Maria Martinez Agüero, Director of Investigation and Innovation, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales Y Matemáticas, Universidad del Rosario], Andrew Roger, Rune Stensvold, Hisao Yoshikawa, Raul Tito Tadeo, Monica Santin-Duran, Funda Dogruman-Al, Kevin Tan, and Juan David Ramirez Gonzalez. Workshop sessions and keynote lectures were developed and given by members of the Faculty.


The workshop took place on 9–10 October and covered sessions on diagnosis (microscopy, culture, PCR, etc.), in vivo and in vitro experimental models, subtype calling from DNA sequence data, gut microbiota analysis (NGS data processing in R), genomics and evolution (introduction to Blastocystis genomics and resources available), and theoretical topics linked to epidemiology, clinical microbiology and infectious disease issues.

Some of the workshop participants and Faculty members

The conference took place on 11–12 October and consisted of nine keynote lectures delivered by the Faculty members, 12 oral presentations and 22 poster presentations.

The award for the best oral presentation was given to Justinn Hamilton who is an ecologist now based at University of Copenhagen for his talk 'Exploring interactions between Blastocystis sp., other intestinal parasites and the gut microbiomes of wild Chimpanzees (Senegal): Not-so-friendly old-friends-hypothesis'.

The award for the best poster presentation went to David Carmena's group for the impressive study 'Molecular epidemiology of Blastocystis sp. in asymptomatic school children from Madrid, Spain'.

The workshop programme can be viewed/downloaded here, and the conference programme is available here. The poster programme is available here.
Please go here to browse conference proceedings, and here for workshop guidelines.
Stay tuned for Wrap Up Part II and III, which will include more photos and some of the take-home messages from the conference.

Please also follow @Blastocystis on Twitter and and the International Blastocystis Network Facebook page for updates/pictures from the conference.

Monday, October 1, 2018

2nd International Blastocystis Conference just around the corner!

Need I remind you that the 2nd International Blastocystis Conference is just around the corner!

You can find an updated list of speakers and the entire programme here.

It will be a total of 4 (f-o-u-r!!) days of discussion of Blastocystis research and sharing of experience in terms of e.g. diagnostics, typing, and genome sequencing.

We'll be covering most areas, including clinical and public health significance, host specificity, genetic diversity, genomics, metagenomics/amplicon-based sequencing, Blastocystis in the clinical microbiology setting, etc. And of course there will be a lot of survey data.

Need I say that I look forward to this?

:-)

I hope to see quite a few of you in Bogotá!

Please follow the International Blastocystis Network (IBN) on Facebook and @Blastocystis on Twitter. We will be posting there during the conference....

(IBN stimulates and promotes activities related to research in Blastocystis. IBN is a member of the World Federation of Parasitologists)

Saturday, August 25, 2018

The International Blastocystis Network (IBN) becomes a member of the World Federation of Parasitologists

The International Blastocystis Network (IBN) becomes a member of World Federation of Parasitologists (WFP).
For the past few years, the Blastocystis community has been increasingly organised and proficient, as evidenced by the international meetings organised so far. And two years ago, the first special issue dedicated to Blastocystis research in a scientific journal was published in Parasitology International.
Therefore, it's time to formalise this network to further stimulate and promote activities related to Blastocystis research and to secure and expand interest in the series of meetings, which are currently held every third year.
At ICOPA 2018 in Daegu, Korea, IBN was registered officially as a member society of World Federation of Parasitologists (http://www.wfpnet.org/).
The network is currently headed by Prof Funda Dogruman-Al, Prof Kevin Tan, Dr Juan-David Ramirez, and Dr Rune Stensvold, and its management and leadership will be further developed in the upcoming meeting in October in Colombia.
IBN is on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/iBlastoNet/) and also on Twitter: @blastocystis

Please follow and support us!

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Next ICOPA in Copenhagen?

As mentioned last month, the Copenhagen team is SO much hoping to be elected as hosts of the next ICOPA (International Congress on Parasitology).
To be chosen as the host, we need ***VOTES*** from the member societies of World Federation of Parasitologists. If for some reason your member society is not represented at this year's ICOPA in Daegu, South Korea, please note that you can vote by proxy.


http://sbsp.eu/images/PDF/ICOPAnhagen_2022_mini_web.pdf
http://icopaxv.dk/documents.html
World Federation of Parasitologists
Wonderful Copenhagen
@ICOPAnhagen2022
#ICOPAnhagen

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Updates on 2nd International Blastocystis Conference

Three months until kick-off of 2nd International Blastocystis Conference in Bogotá!

A couple of updates:

  • Abstract submission deadline has been postponed to 15th of August 2018
  • We have had a couple of speaker cancellations. Drs Pauline Scanland and Katerina Pomajbikova will not be able to participate. Hopefully, we'll be blessed by their presence at the next big Blasto event. Instead, Drs Raul Tito-Tadeo and Hisao Yoshikawa have very kindly accepted to give keynote lectures and lead workshop sessions. And so we will still have a great event!
For more information on workshop and conference, please visit the official conference website here.

Since it's summer here in Europe, and since I love Phlox, I thought, I'd attach a couple of images that I received yesterday from my dear friend Jaco Verweij.


Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Experimental models for Blastocystis research - new paper out!

Experimental models are critical to advancing our knowledge on the role of Blastocystis in health and disease.

We have now published our work led by Dr Katerina Pomajbikova on the suitability of the rat as a model of Blastocystis colonisation. We observed that the rats were able to sustain the colonisation for more than one year, when a ST1 strain isolated from a human was used.

Next step could now be to monitor gut microbiota before and after challenge with Blastocystis cysts and look for changes at both individual and community level,, changes in alpha and beta diversity, etc.

The paper is free for download here until August 19, 2018.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Updates on 2nd International Blastocystis Conference in Bogotá!

Hi everyone,

There's only little more than three months before the kick-off of our 2nd International Blastocystis Conference! And as in the case of our 1st conference in Ankara in 2015, participants are in for a real treat! I simply don't know where to begin... !



Well, for starters, here's the hotel in which the conference will take place (11–12 October). It's the Hotel Estelar La Fonata in Bogotá! I think it looks amazing!

Prior to the very conference (9–10 October), there will be a two-day workshop at Universidad del Rosario - Quinta De Mutis.

Please go to the conference website and find more information: http://www.urosario.edu.co/Blastocystis/en/home/

The line-up of faculty members is impressive; again, please visit website to update yourself with workshop leaders and keynote speakers.

We will be dealing with anything from diagnostics to genomics, from epidemiology to cell biology, from experimental models to phylogenetics!

There will be plenty of Colombian coffee to sample and you might also with to sign up for the gala dinner!

So, don't miss out on the opportunity to put yourself into the very epicentre of Blastocystis research and experience the dynamic city of Bogotá!

Importantly, the deadline for abstract submission is 1st of July, so please everyone: Get your act together - submit your abstract today and support us with your presence and your enthusiasm with regard to the most common parasite in the human gut: Blastocystis!

SEE YOU THERE!!!

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