Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Personal Post-Conference Thoughts on Future Blastocystis Research

I'm still on a high after the 3rd Int'l Blastocystis Conference! The Scientific Committee is in the process of putting together a TrendsTalk paper for Trends in Parasitology to provide a brief summary of the different topics presented at the conference, including some important updates.

I personally think Blastocystis research has come a long way since I entered the field back in 2004, but I would like to call for more cross-disciplinary approaches to studying the parasite.

In particular, we need to stimulate a research interest in bioinformaticians, vets, food microbiologists, and gastroenterologists.

The bioinformatics people should help us analyze NGS data (shotgun, metabarcoding) and provide some robust and  guidelines for cut-offs for e.g. Blastocystis positivity and negativity in NGS data.

Vets should be interested in studying the differences in Blastocystis colonization across different animal populations and find out what drives colonization and the impact is has on the host and host gut microbiota. Studying the relationships of these microbes in animals can help us understand these relationships in humans. Vets should help us find out why Blastocystis is so common in ruminants and so rare in carnivores.

To this end, food microbiologists should take an interest to study associations and interactions between Blastocystis, the gut microbiota and the host. Including metabolomics. Diet as a driver of colonization should be investigated.

Finally, gastroenterologists should take an interest in Blastocystis to identify its positive or negative association to various GI diseases (IBS, IBD, microscopic colitis, coeliac disease, diverticulosis, colon cancer, etc, etc.)

We should take advantage of the fact that Blastocystis is one of the few intestinal parasites that can easily be cultured, which means that cells can be used for in vivo and in vitro experiments. Protocols should be developed for encystment, and cyst production on a larger scale should be enabled, since cysts can be used for oral administration. 

The current shift in paradigm that reflects the recognition of Blastocystis as marker of intestinal eubiosis could be supported and expanded by increasing the involvement of these types of professions.

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Wrap-up of 3rd International Blastocystis Conference

The 3rd International Blastocystis Conference took place Wednesday-Friday last week.

Organising committee:

  • Anastasios (Tasos) Tsaousis 
  • Eleni Gentekaki
  • Chr. Rune Stensvold
  • Funda Dogruman-Al

 Scientific committee:

  • Kevin S W Tan
  • Özgür Kurt
  • Eleni Gentekaki 
  • Chr. Rune Stensvold
  • Funda Dogruman-Al
  • Anastasios (Tasos) Tsaousis

 Sponsors included 

  • Microbiology Society
  • Biology - MDPI
  • PCR Biosystems

The conference was facilitated by Top Kinisis

The conference in numbers:

  •  3-day conference
  • 73 attendees
  • 29 countries represented
  • 66 abstracts
  • 38 oral presentations
  • 28 poster presentations
  • 265 tweets using #Blastocystis21 as hashtag
  • 3 awards

Awards:

Blastocystis Quiz Award: Mark van der Giezen (@MitoRem)

Poster Award: Adriana Marcela Higuera Gelvez (Draft genomes of Blastocystis isolates from human samples in Bogotá, Colombia)

Oral Presentation:

  • Winner: Jamie Newton (Investigating the metabolic fluctuations of the human gut during Blastocystis infection)
  • 1st runner-up: Lei Deng (Experimental colonization with Blastocystis ST4 is associated with protective immune response and modulation of gut microbiome in a DSS-induced colitis mouse model)
  • 2nd runner-up: Zuzana Lhotska and Vincent Billy (back-to-back presentations: Blastocystis colonization alters host immune response and gut microbiome, part a and b, respectively)

A special issue 'Putting Blastocystis on the Spot: Examining the Biology, Ecology and Epidemiology of a controversial gut microbe' has been launched in Frontiers. This Research Topic is linked to the conference. You can go here for more information.

The 4th International Blastocystis Conference is planned to take place in Chania, Crete, Greece in 2024.

Last, but not least a couple of screen capture impressions from the conference:



I will be back shortly with more updates from the conference.


R


Friday, May 28, 2021

Friday, May 7, 2021

Huge international support for the 3rd International Blastocystis Conference

 

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

The 3rd Blastocystis Conference will be AWESOME!

 Hi everyone,

We're currently going through the abstracts submitted for the upcoming Blastocystis conference, which will be held exclusively online.

The scientific quality of the abstracts is very high, and participants in this year's conference are in for a veritable treat! 

Expect important and potentially game-changing updates on host-pathogen interactions, cell biology and evolution, epidemiology, intestinal ecology, diagnosis and molecular characterisation.

Use this opportunity to obtain answers to all of your Blastocystis questions.

We are very much overwhelmed about the interest for this event and the support.


💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

Thursday, April 29, 2021

One Health Parasitology Conference in Brazil: XXVII Congresso Da Sociedade Brasileira De Parasitologia

'Parasitologia na perspectiva da Saúde Única'

Happy and thankful to be part of this years congress in parasitology in The XXVII Congress of the Brazilian Society of Parasitology - PARASITO-2021, which will be held online
from May 4th to 6th, 2021.

The programme is available here for download.

In my talk, I'll be giving examples of the applicability of the metabarcoding assay in place at our institute (Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen) for detecting and differentiating parasites in various matrices from humans, other animals and the environment.