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Prof. Maria Marco joins the ISAPP board of directors

ISAPP happily announces that Prof. Maria Marco Ph.D. from the Department of Food Science and Technology at UC Davis has joined the ISAPP board of directors.

Prof. Marco has broad expertise in probiotics, prebiotics, and fermented foods. She has a special interest in lactic acid bacteria (from plant and animal sources) and the mechanisms of their interaction with their hosts.  She is one of the few researchers globally to tackle the important issue of the role of delivery matrix in probiotic functionality. She has more than 70 publications and book chapters.

Prof. Marco serves as the Chair of the Food Science Graduate Group and has mentored over 50 undergraduates, MS students, and visiting scholars, 11 PhD students, and 13 post-docs. She is active in education and public outreach on fermented foods and is a founder of a start-up company on microbial detection.

Prof. Marco serves as an Editor of mSphere and has served as the Guest Editor – Special issue on Food Biotechnology for Current Opinion in Biotechnology (2018). As guest editor of COB, she mediated publication of outcomes from several ISAPP discussion groups.

See her profile here. For more details on what her lab is up to, see here.

See here for the list of ISAPP’s all-academic board of directors.

ISAPP recognizes Prof. Michael Cabana’s contributions during his board of directors tenure

Prof. Michael Cabana’s service on ISAPP’s board of directors has come to an end in 2018—and the remaining board members wish to affirm his rich legacy of contributions, which furthered ISAPP’s mission of advancing the science of probiotics and prebiotics.

Dr. Cabana, Professor of Pediatrics, Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Director of the Division of General Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), joined the ISAPP board in 2008. He served as secretary for five years and treasurer for one year, and was local host for the 2011 ISAPP annual meeting in Berkeley, USA. He chaired discussion groups at eight different annual meetings:

  • 2009: Designing human clinical trials for probiotics
  • 2010: Prebiotics and probiotics in perinatal nutrition
  • 2012: From clinical trials to clinical guidelines:  Reconciling the evidence
  • 2013: Use of probiotics and/or prebiotics to program fetal and newborn health / first 1000 days of life
  • 2014: Infant colic:  Is there enough clinical evidence to support probiotic interventions?
  • 2015: Technology transfer and academic-industry partnerships
  • 2016: Colic update:  IPDMA and mechanisms
  • 2019: Prebiotic applications in children

 

Dr. Cabana was proactive in developing ISAPP responses to media misrepresentations of research by co-authoring letters to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine (under review) and JAMA Internal Medicine (in press):

  • Guarner F, Cabana MD, Sanders ME. Late initiation of probiotic therapy for acute pediatric gastroenteritis may account for null results. New England J Med. Submitted.
  • Cabana MD, Salminen S, Sanders, ME. Probiotic safety – reasonable certainty of no harm. JAMA Internal Med. In Press.

As outcomes of ISAPP discussion groups or as part of other ISAPP initiatives, Dr. Cabana coauthored several papers, including:

 

Always a congenial and collaborative colleague, Dr. Cabana will be missed by the ISAPP board as he now turns his focus to other professional activities. Dr. Cabana’s UCSF lab has several ongoing trials related to the microbiome and probiotics in pediatric populations.

Prof. Hania Szajewska joins the ISAPP board of directors

ISAPP is pleased to announce that Prof. Hania Szajewska MD from the Department of Paediatrics of The Medical University of Warsaw has joined the ISAPP board of directors.

Prof. Szajewska’s depth and breadth of experience in probiotics, prebiotics, and the effects of early dietary interventions on long term health will greatly facilitate ISAPP’s ability to fulfill its mission to advance the science of probiotics and prebiotics.

In addition to conducting clinical trials on probiotics in pediatric populations, Prof. Szajewska has led numerous efforts to systematically review the totality of evidence on probiotics and prebiotics in order to develop evidence-based recommendations where warranted. She has more than 285 publications and 25 book chapters.

Prof. Szajewska serves as the Editor-in-Chief (Europe) of the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition and is involved in European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition in numerous capacities.

Prof. Szajewska replaces Prof. Michael Cabana MD MPH, who is stepping down from the board to embrace new professional opportunities.

See here for the list of ISAPP’s all-academic board of directors.