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Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis Researcher in Belgium Receives ISAPP’s 2024 Glenn Gibson Early Career Researcher Award

/in News /by KC

The ISAPP selection committee for the Glenn Gibson Early Career Researcher Award is pleased to announce that Dr. Boushra Dalile PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven (Belgium), is the recipient of this year’s award.

Dr. Dalile is a researcher who moved from studying psychology and cognitive neuroscience into biomedical sciences, completing her PhD in 2021. She now focuses on the gut-brain axis – specifically, the mechanistic role of colonic short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) as mediators of prebiotic effects on stress-related mental disorders. In one of her group’s most recent studies, she used colon-delivery capsules to approximate the metabolic effects of prebiotic administration, and found that direct delivery of SCFAs successfully reduced physiological stress response (as measured by cortisol) in humans. She is interested in continuing to explore the potential of butyrate for modulating fear as well as anxiety-related learning and memory processes.

A multilingual researcher who lived in Germany and Sweden before coming to KU Leuven, Dr. Dalile currently has a postdoc project supported by The Research Foundation – Flanders, titled “INTERFEAR – Investigating the endogenous metabolite butyrate as an epigenetic modulator of fear memory”.

The 2024 award committee, composed of ISAPP board members and affiliates, identified Dr. Dalile as making important contributions in the biotics field early in her scientific career. The award is given annually to a researcher who is no more than five years past their terminal degree, in a field of study related to probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics or fermented foods. She will receive a cash prize and a speaking slot at the ISAPP annual meeting in July, 2024.

Inaugural Sanders Award for Advancing Biotic Science Goes to Argentinian Researcher who leads YOGURITO program

/in ISAPP Science Blog /by KC

The ISAPP board of directors is pleased to share that the winner of the inaugural Sanders Award for Advancing Biotic Science is Dr. Maria Pía Taranto PhD, a researcher at the Center of Reference for Lactobacilli at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CERELA-CONICET) in Argentina.

Dr. Taranto leads the YOGURITO program, established in 2010, which delivers yogurt and other foods enriched with a probiotic to more than 200,000 lower income schoolchildren through a collaboration between scientists, government, industry, and the local community. For this program, Dr. Taranto and colleagues initially assessed candidate strains and selected L. rhamnosus CRL1505, and then led several preclinical and clinical studies demonstrating how it improves immune function. She and her team then developed the partnerships needed to deliver the foods (yogurt, chocolate milk, fresh cheese, and dehydrated powder) free of charge to children in public schools. Dr. Taranto has showed remarkable tenacity and resourcefulness to lead and maintain this program for over a decade in an environment where funding is limited and irregular and where inflation is high. Today the program has a tangible impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of children per year who may otherwise be at risk of malnutrition.

Dr. Taranto has advanced the biotics field by translating the science and demonstrating real-world impact, using probiotics as a tool to support health in communities with limited resources. In the future she hopes to be able to measure the effects of the probiotic intervention on health and academic outcomes in the children.

After receiving her undergraduate degree in biochemistry and her PhD from National University of Tucuman, Dr. Taranto came to work as a researcher at CERELA-CONICET in 2001. Besides the YOGURITO program, she is involved in research on metabolic and technological aspects of lactic acid bacteria, characterizing new strains for future applications such as in metabolic diseases.

The Sanders Award for Advancing Biotic Science was established in 2023 thanks to the generous contributions of ISAPP community members, to honor the legacy of ISAPP’s former Executive Science Officer, Mary Ellen Sanders PhD. This annual award recognizes someone who has helped advance the biotics field, including probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics and fermented foods. This year’s committee, composed of ISAPP board members, an industry member representative and Dr. Sanders, selected Dr. Taranto from among the many deserving nominees. Dr. Taranto will receive a cash award and will speak about her work at the ISAPP annual meeting in July, 2024.

Inaugural nominations open for ISAPP Award: The Sanders Award for Advancing Biotic Science

/in News /by KC

With this year’s retirement of ISAPP’s longtime Executive Science Officer, Dr. Mary Ellen Sanders PhD, the ISAPP board of directors sought a suitable way to honor her contributions in advancing scientific development in the fields of probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics and fermented foods. Many scientists in these fields have commended Mary Ellen’s leadership, initiative, collaboration, and communication over the last 20 years.

Board members decided to launch a new award in Mary Ellen’s honor: The Sanders Award for Advancing Biotic Science. This award aims to promote excellence in the biotic field and recognize exceptional achievement across a range of potential endeavours including research, scientific communication and stakeholder engagement. A cash grant and travel to the ISAPP meeting will be awarded to the annual recipient starting in 2024.

Prof. Gregor Reid PhD, ISAPP co-founder and former board member, who championed the award, says: “What better way to applaud leadership and someone who has placed honesty, stewardship and evidence-based progress above all else, than to have an annual celebration of advancement in these critically important fields.”

The ISAPP board invited members of the ISAPP community to donate to a special endowment fund in order to sustain the Sanders Award over the long term, and this fund received over $34,000 of donations.

ISAPP President, Prof. Dan Merenstein MD, says: “We have really appreciated and been touched by the generous individual and company donations. But none of that is surprising because Mary Ellen has been a positive force in this field since the beginning and everyone who works with her respects and enjoys working with her.”

The award was launched in August, 2023 and nominations are open through to November, 2023.

Find out more about the award here.

ISAPP awards the Glenn Gibson Early Career Research Prize to two diet and gut health researchers

/in News, ISAPP Science Blog /by KC

The ISAPP board of directors is pleased to announce that the 2022 Glenn Gibson Early Career Research Prize has been awarded to two promising researchers in the field of probiotics, prebiotics and related substances.

Dr. Martin Laursen, Senior Researcher at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, has demonstrated excellence in his work on the impact of probiotics and human milk oligosaccharides on infant gut microbiota and health. Dr. Eirini Dimidi, Lecturer at King’s College in London, UK, has carried out meaningful work on probiotics, prebiotics, and fermented foods and their impact on constipation.

The award criteria stipulated that the researchers must be fewer than five years from their terminal degree, and their scope of research must be basic or clinical research disciplines in the fields of probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics or fermented foods. In addition, the researchers were required to show evidence of a significant research finding and its publication(s), new ideas that advance the field, and / or evidence of impact through citizenship, general outreach, social media or other means.

The prize committee chose the two recipients from among dozens of applicants and identified each of them as having made important contributions to the field at this early stage in their scientific careers. Each winner will receive a cash prize and an opportunity to speak at the ISAPP annual meeting, to be held in Spain in June, 2022.

Stay tuned to learn more about these rising star researchers!

See here for details about the 2022 Glenn Gibson Early Career Research Prize

ISAPP board member Prof. Colin Hill receives Career Achievement Research Award from University College Cork

/in News /by KC

This month, ISAPP board member and former president Professor Colin Hill received a prestigious award from University College Cork (Ireland), where he has worked since 1992: The UCC Career Achievement Research Award. The prize honours leading researchers whose influential work has been recognized globally.

Hill’s research interests lie in molecular microbiology—specifically, issues around infection. His team was the first to discover lacticin 3147 and thuricin CD, two examples of a class of anti-microbials produced by bacteria that kill bacteria. He is also a leading scientist exploring the human virome: his team developed tools for gut virome analysis, performed phage therapy in vivo, and increased the number of known phage genomes by tens of thousands. Hill is the inventor on 23 patents, has published over 570 research articles, and to date, has secured over €25 million worth of research funding. His publications and citations put him in the top 1% of researchers worldwide.

Hill has served on the ISAPP board of directors since 2009, and was president from 2012-2015. He has supported ISAPP’s efforts to advance the science of probiotics through his scientific insights and leadership: he was lead author on the landmark ISAPP consensus paper on probiotics, participated in the recent ISAPP consensus panel on postbiotics, led numerous ISAPP discussion groups during the ISAPP annual meetings, and co-authored 10 ISAPP publications.

Prof. Todd Klaenhammer, who is a founding ISAPP board member, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a retired professor from North Carolina State University, says of the award, “This is fantastic and a huge honor for Colin, one that is very well deserved. He has distinguished himself as a leading scientist, with some of the most brilliant work I have seen from anyone who has successfully crossed disciplines—as he has with his work on phage, probiotics, listeria, among others.”

ISAPP’s Executive Science Officer, Dr. May Ellen Sanders, says, “Colin is a rare combination of great scientist, effective leader and engaging person. During his tenure as president, ISAPP really made it onto the global map. It was a productive and really fun three years with him at ISAPP’s helm.”

Hill’s ISAPP colleagues know him for his exceptional curiosity and willingness to push boundaries, and wish him the best of success as he continues his groundbreaking scientific work.