Gut Microbiota International Grant

Harry Sokol, is Professor in the Gastroenterology department of the Saint Antoine Hospital (APHP, Paris, France), the co-director of the Microbiota, Gut & Inflammation team (INSERM CRSA UMRS 938, Sorbonne Université, Paris), group leader in Micalis institute (INRAE) and coordinator of the “Paris Center for Microbiome Medicine” (www.fhu-pacemm.fr/). 

Harry Sokol is an internationally recognized expert in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and in gut microbiota fields. He published over 300 papers on these topics in major journals (including Gut, Gastroenterology, Cell Metabolism, Cell Host & Microbe, Nature communication, Nature Medicine). His work on the role of the gut microbiota in IBD pathogenesis led to landmark papers describing the IBD-associated dysbiosis (imbalance in gut microbiota composition) and the role of the pivotal commensal bacteria Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in gut homeostasis and in IBD. Currently, his work focuses on deciphering the gut microbiota-host interactions in health and diseases (particularly IBD), in order to better understand their role in pathogenesis and develop innovative treatments. Harry Sokol is exploring particularly the role of the microbiota in tryptophan and energy metabolism for which he is recipient of two ERC grants. Beside basic science, he is also involved in translational research. 

He is the current president of the French group of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (www.gftf.fr) and the head of the APHP Fecal Microbiota Transplantation Center, he coordinated a pilot randomized control trial evaluating Fecal Microbiota Transplantation in Crohn’s disease and he is currently coordinating 2 phase III nationwide randomized control trial evaluating this approach in ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Harry Sokol is currently Associate Editor for Gastroenterology. Harry Sokol co-founded Exeliom biosciences (https://www.exeliombio.com/).

Twitter/X: @h_sokol

Joël Doré joined INRA in 1983 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the U.S. in 1988. Trained in microbial exology, he developed intestinal metagenomics for diagnostic applications and tools used to study interactions between food, microbiota, and their hosts. 

With more than 250 publications (and an h-index of 72), Doré received LABIP’s International Science Award for Outstanding Excellence in Lactic Acid Bacteria Research with Industrial Relevance in 2008. In 2014, he won the Simone and Cino del Duca Foundation’s Grand Prize in Science (along with S.D. Ehrlich) for his scientific contribution to the topic “Microbiome and Homeostasis”. In 2016, he received the Dupont Nutrition & Health Science Medal for Excellence in Microbial Research. Doré’s mission is to contribute to a better understanding of the symbiosis between humans and microbes to improve prevention and treatment.

He is cofounder and scientific advisor of MaaT Pharma, Novobiome and GMT, and science coordinator of the digital platform https://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com.

Professor Francisco Guarner graduated in Medicine at the University of Barcelona and trained in Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, at the Hospital Clinic; Ph.D. degree in Medicine at the University of Navarra. Visiting Scientist and Research Fellow at the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo (Michigan, USA, 1983), the Royal Free Hospital (London, UK, 1984), the King’s College Hospital (London, UK, 1984-1986), and the Wellcome Research Laboratories (Beckenham, UK, 1986). Professor Francisco Guarner was previously a researcher at the Digestive System Research Unit of the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute and assistant professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

He is member of the Steering Committee of the International Human Microbiome Consortium (IHMC), and member of the Scientific Committee of the Gut Microbiota for Health Section of the European Society of Neurogastroenterology and Motility. Co-author of 338 publications in the field of mucosal immunity, gastrointestinal inflammation and gut microbiota; holds an H-index of 68.

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/ABF-1192-2020

Christoph Högenauer is Associated Professor of Medicine at the University Hospital of the Medical University Graz, where he is head of the IBD clinics, the endoscopy unit and of the Theodor Escherich Laboratory of Microbiome Research.  Christoph Högenauer is an internationally recognized expert in IBD, intestinal infections and in the field of the gastrointestinal microbiota. He has published 120 SCI listed publication, besides other in the New England Journal of Medicine, PNAS, Gastroenterology, Nature Reviews in Gastroenterology and Hepatology, JCI, Microbiome, American Journal of Gastroenterology, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

His research fields are on antibiotic associated colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, bacterial virulence factors, gut microbiota and on fecal microbiota transplantation. In his clinical work as a Gastroenterologist he focuses besides treatment of IBD on interventional endoscopy and intensive care medicine. 

Professor Marie Joossens is a basic-scientist and group leader at Laboratory of Microbiology in the department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Ghent University in Belgium.

Marie Joossens is an expert in human microbiome research with more than 100 articles on complex microbial communities published in major journals (including Gut, Gastroenterology, PNAS, Science and Nature Microbiology). 

Early in her career, she described a bacterial signature for Crohn's disease using faecal samples and went on to uncover confounding factors for microbiome research by conducting population-based studies. Her current research focuses on microbial ecosystems and their relationship with health and disease, using molecular microbiology in combination with (deep)cultivation. As such, she is doing pioneering work in areas such as the ocular microbiome among others. Building on her experience in gut microbiome research, she studies the repercussions of changes in various human ecosystems on complex microbiota, related to health.

Marie Joossens is a member of the board of directors of the Belgian Society for Microbiology (BSM).

Nicola Segata, Ph.D., is Professor and Principal Investigator in the CIBIO Department at the University of Trento (Italy) and Principal Investigator at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan (Italy). 

His lab (http://segatalab.cibio.unitn.it/) comprises more than 25 researchers and employs experimental metagenomic tools and novel computational approaches to study the diversity of the microbiome across conditions and populations and its role in human diseases. The projects in the lab bring together computer scientists, microbiologists, statisticians, and clinicians and are focused on profiling microbiomes with strain-level resolution and on the meta-analysis of very large sets of metagenomes with novel computational tools. The lab of Professor Segata is supported by the European Research Council and by several other European agencies.

Dr. Nicola Segata is an internationally recognized expert in computational biology, metagenomics, and microbiome research.

Pro-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Adjunct Professor of Medicine, University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

Doctor Simrén’s main research areas are the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI), as well as the treatment of these, including a specific focus on the relevance of the gut microbiome in DGBI. He has published more than 390 original articles and written several book chapters on GI motility diseases and DGBI and is currently supervisor for twelve PhD students and five post-docs. Doctor Simrén has served as council member for several international organizations, including UEG and the Rome Foundation. Professor Simrén has also been working as Deputy Editor and Associate Editor of Gut, and as the Clinical Editor of Neurogastroenterology and Motility. Currently, Professor Simrén is Associate Editor of Gastroenterology.

Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Microbial Therapeutics and Nutrition in Gastroenterology Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute

Dr. Elena Verdu graduated as M.D. from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), where she trained in medicine and gastroenterology and lectured on gastrointestinal physiology at the Department of Human Physiology at UBA. She then obtained a Doctorate in clinical and translational gastrointestinal research from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, under the supervision of Professor Andre Blum. Her M.D. thesis explored the interaction between chronic infection with Helicobacter pylori and proton pump inhibitors on gastric acid secretion, bacterial overgrowth, and chronic gastritis in humans. 

During her Ph.D work in the Department of Gnotobiology and Microbiology at the Czech Academy of Science (working with Professor Helena Tlaskalova), she gained experience in gnotobiotic mouse modelling of inflammatory bowel diseases and microbiology. 

As a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University, she identified the role of specific probiotics in modulating neuromotor and visceral pain pathways. Dr. Verdu became a faculty member at McMaster University in 2006 where research program focuses on the pathophysiology of inflammatory disorders, such as IBD and celiac disease, with emphasis on diet-microbiota interactions. 

Dr. Verdu is an elected fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and has received several awards including the Master’s in Gastroenterology (Basic Science) by the American Gastroenterology Association, the Excellence in Research Award (Canadian Association of Gastroenterology), the Crohn’s Colitis Canada-Pfeizer Women in IBD: Outstanding Research Achievement Award and the American Gastroenterology Association Institute Council Basic & Clinical Intestinal Disorders (BCID) Section Research Mentor Award.

Dr. Wu is the Ferdinand G. Weisbrod Professor in Gastroenterology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where he is the Vice Chief for Research in the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology and the Director of both the NIH funded Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Disease as well as the Penn Center for Nutritional Science and Medicine. 

He was the inaugural Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the American Gastroenterological Association’s Center for Gut Microbiome Research and Education and is an elected member of both the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He was the 2015 recipient of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation IBD Basic Research Award, the 2020 Sherman Prize, and is currently the Co-Director of the PennCHOP Microbiome Program. 

The research programs in the Wu laboratory focus on the mutualistic interactions between the gut microbiota and the host with a particular focus on metabolism. Current areas of investigation include the effect of diet on the gut microbiome and its subsequence effect on host metabolism with a focus on early life events as well as understanding their relationship to dietary treatments for IBD.