Thanks to all those who made it to another great meeting in 2021!
LMM2021 Speaking panel: London Microbiome Meeting 8 - Thursday 28th October 2021
Professor Georgina Hold is a Professor of Gut Microbiology at UNSW Microbiome Research Centre, Australia. Professor Hold's research focusses on understanding the impact of gastrointestinal microbes on human health and disease, with a specialist interest in inflammatory bowel disease. As well as collaborating with research groups from all over the world, Professor Hold leads the Australian IBD Microbiome (AIM) Study, a longitudinal IBD cohort study.
Associate Professor Marques is a National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow and a former National Health and Medical Research Council and Heart Foundation Early Career Fellow (2013-2017). A/Prof. Marques' research interests include identifying novel therapies and early markers to prevent cardiovascular diseases through the manipulation of dietary intake, gut microbes and their metabolites.
Professor Nicola Segata leads the Laboratory of Computational Metagenomics at the Department of CIBIO. Professor Segata's lab employs experimental meta’omic tools and novel computational approaches to study the diversity of the microbiome and its role in human dysbiosis and infection.
Short talks
Dr Aimée Parker is a postgraduate research associate at the Quadram institute. One of Dr Parker's primary interests is in investigating the gut-brain axis and how the gut microbiota could be contributing to age related diseases such as, dementia, Parkinsons and Alzheimers.
Daniel James is a Ph.D. student investigating the effects of dietary protein intake on microbially mediated metabolite composition and the subsequent role of those metabolites in gut barrier function.
Dr Lars Christensen recently finished his Ph.D. earlier this year investigating Personalized nutrition approaches and biomarkers in weight management, and is now a postdoc researcher investigating Personalized nutrition and microbial enterotypes.
LMM2020 Speaking panel: London Microbiome Meeting - Friday 9th October 2020
Ana M. Valdes received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, USA, where she specialized in Genetic Epidemiology. She is a Reader and Associate professor at the University of Nottingham. Her research is focused on deciphering the molecular mechanisms related to ageing and age related diseases such as osteoarthritis and cardiovascular disease. More recently she has embarked on gut microbiome research seeking to understand its impact on human health.
David Weinkove is an associate professor at Durham University, UK, studying host–microbe interactions in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. David has been focusing on the way microbes affect the physiology of their hosts, including the process of aging.
Dr James Kinross is a consultant colorectal surgeon, at St. Mary's Hospital London. His clinical interests are in minimally invasive and laparoscopic surgery for the treatment of colorectal cancer. He also has an interest in surgical nutrition and modulation of the gut microbiota by pro and prebiotics for improved operative outcomes. He is performing clinical research at Imperial College London and at the Royal Marsden Hospital. The aim is to develop novel biomarkers for the early detection of bowel cancer, and to develop novel therapies for its treatment based on a deeper understanding of how the microbiota that reside in the gut influence tumour biology and the response of cancer to treatment.
Short talks
Victoria is a bioinformatics PhD student working in the Translational Systems Biology Group at the Centre for Host-Microbiome Interactions. She uses bioinformatics techniques and high-performance computing to investigate the spread of antimicrobial resistance from metagenomic datasets. Previous research using metagenomics has focussed on characterising the resistome in the gut, but little has been done in other body sites and how this implicates resistance being acquired and maintained across the body. To investigate this further, Victoria has characterised the antimicrobial resistance gene (ARG) profiles, or “resistome”, in the oral cavity and compare this with the gut across human populations from China, Fiji and the US.
After my bachelor in Life Sciences, I did an MRes in Synthetic Biology at University College London. I spent the next two years working in antimicrobial resistance solutions at Jaramillo’s lab, Warwick University while setting a start-up bioengineering microbial communities. In 2018 I started my Ph.D. which focus in the link between Psoriatic Arthritis and the gut microbiome. During this time, I have developed an interest in new technologies to understand and modify microbial communities such as the human gut microbiome.
Dr Helen Alexander is a clinical research fellow in Dermatology. She is currently undertaking a PhD, during her dermatology specialist training, on the role of the skin microbiome in atopic dermatitis, supervised by Prof Carsten Flohr, Dr David Moyes, Dr Sophia Tsoka and Prof Jonathan Barker. Her project is investigating the role of Staphylococcus aureus in atopic dermatitis and how it may interact with the cutaneous immune system to drive inflammation in the disease.
Speaking panel: London Microbiome Meeting 8 - 30th October 2019
Liz Wellington is part of Environmental Bioscience, School of Life Sciences and director of Warwick Environmental Systems Interdisciplinary Centre at the University of Warwick. She is involved in the study of bacteria in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and also studies survival of pathogenic and antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment. The focus is on understanding activity of bacterial microbiomes, interactions with higher organisms and the survival, activity and interaction of human, animal and plant pathogens outside of their hosts. She has expertise in the environmental transmission routes for antimicrobial resistant bacteria and resistance genes, identifying drivers for their dissemination.
Twitter:@ComMetUK
Dr Cabreiro is a biochemist, who did his PhD studies at the University of Paris, followed by post-doctoral training at University College London, working on understanding the biological mechanisms underlying molecular stress protection and ageing. More recently he has pioneered the use of the nematode worm C. elegans as a model system to study complex host-microbiota-drug interactions, in the context of metabolism and ageing. He was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from Wellcome/Royal Society in 2014 to establish his independent group at UCL, and since 2018 heads a lab at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, Imperial College London using a combination of multi-omic, computational and high-throughput screening approaches in C. elegans and mouse models to discover the role of gut microbial metabolites in regulating host physiology, and to develop strategies targeting the microbiota for the treatment of metabolic disease, cancer and ageing. He was awarded an EMBO Young Investor Award in 2017, in recognition of his contributions to his research field.
Dr Rodriguez-Mateos is a Lecturer at the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine of King’s College London, UK. She holds a BSc in Chemistry from the University of A Coruña, Spain, and a PhD from the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences of the University of Reading, UK. Prior to joining Kings in 2016, she worked as a Research Group Leader at the Division of Cardiology and Vascular Medicine of the University of Dusseldorf in Germany. Her research aims to investigate the health benefits of plant foods and phytochemicals, with a strong focus on understanding the bioavailability, metabolism and cardiovascular health benefits of dietary (poly)phenols. Current interests include the investigation of the role of the gut microbiome on the health benefits of phytochemicals, and the development of biomarkers of plant food intake using metabolomic approaches. She is an Associate Editor for the RSC journal Food and Function and member of the editorial board of Nutrition and Healthy Aging.
Twitter: @anarmateos
Many thanks to all those who attended the second LMM of 2017 for making it such a successful event! The speakers were incredibly well received, with the following prestigious researchers presenting their work:
Andrew is an environmnental microbiologist, with a particular research interest in the behaviour of microbial communities and how they interact with their surroundings. He believes that in soils, understanding community resilience and how this affects the breakdown of organic matter and cycling of nutrients is critical to how we grow out food. Andrew's laboratory uses modern metagenomic approaches to investigate community function and responses to soil management. In previous positions, at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory - University of Georgia and the Center for Biofilm Engineering - Montana State University, he has studied the activity of microbes in soil, hydrothermal environments and the deep subsurface.
Gemma is a lecturer in metagenomics at the University of Reading. She entered the University as a PhD student in 2002 worked for 8 years as a PDRA in both Food and Pharmacy, before becoming a lecturer in Food and Nutritional Sciences.
After completing her Masters degree in Biochemistry at the University of Oxford in 2008, Carrie undertook a PhD in the Ulijasz group, CMBI, Imperial College London. Here she developed a fluorescence-based assay to study iron-heme metabolism in a high-throughput manner in Gram-negative pathogens. She joined the Frankel Lab as a Post-doc in May 2016 and is currently investigating the role of the microbiota and the effect of antibiotic treatment on enteric infection, using Citrobacter rodentium as a murine model for EPEC and EHEC pathogenesis.
Katherine obtained her BSc in Human Biology at the University of Birmingham in 2013. She then graduated with a MSc in Medical Microbiology at the University of Manchester in 2015. Her thesis involved characterising a novel isolate from the human throat and the re-classsification of Moraxella boevrei. During this time, she complemented her part-time studies with working as a medical laboratory assistant at the Mycology Reference Centre Manchester at Wythenshawe Hospital (UHSM). Since 2015, she has been employed as a research assistant at the Blizard Institute and using next generation techniques to study the preterm gut microbiome.
Erica graduated in 2011 at University of Milan - Bicocca with a thesis about the characterization, by means of barcoded amplicon pyrosequencing, of the microbiome associated with the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. Deeply interested in the relationship between bacteria and their eukaryotic hosts, she then completed her PhD at University of Milan in January 2015, studying the gut symbionts of insects with both cultivation and molecular techniques. After one year of postdoc in Milan, in which she explored the field of marine bacteria, she moved to Queen Mary University of London in 2016 to join William Wade’s group. She uses her expertise in next generation sequencing and data analysis in a number of studies investigating the role of the human microbiome in health and disease.
Denise obtained her PhD at University College London investigating the evolution of molecular mechanisms of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Postdoctoral work has included the investigation of the relationship between bacterial fitness and genotype at UCL, molecular TB diagnostic methods using isothermal technologies and mass spectrometry and the investigation of factors which influence the emergence of bacterial resistance using next generation sequencing technologies at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Denise moved to LGC in 2011 working in the Molecular and Cell Biology Team investigating the application of metrology (the science of measurement) on areas such as metagenomics for microbial analysis, the monitoring and identification of infectious diseases, including the investigation into methods for antimicrobial resistance detection in microorganisms.
LMM5 - 30th Jan 2017
- Dr David MacIntyre (Imperial College London) - Vaginal microbiota and their implications in poor pregnancy outcomes
- Dr Tom Marrs (King’s College London) - Furry pets are associated with protection from food allergy and increased diversity of infants’ faecal microbiota.
- Professor Fiona Powrie (University of Oxford) - Host Microbial Interactions in the Intestine in Health and Disease
- Dr Joy Leng (University of Surrey) - The effect of grass sickness on the equine gut microbiome and metabonome
- Dr Jamie Lorimer (University of Oxford) Making the microbiome public: engaging people with metagenomics
A summary of the event has been kindly provided by attendee and KCL medical student, Alexandra von Guionneau.
The first London Microbiome Meeting of 2017 took place on the 30th of January at St Thomas’ Hospital. Now into its third year of running, the symposium was organised by King’s College London’s department of Twin Research. An impressive array of speakers (and some fantastic artwork) attracted over 100 attendees, including medical researchers, clinicians, social scientists and eve n a few veterinarians! The evening was concluded with the chance to network over a glass of wine.
Thanks to @StudioMurugiah for our amazing poster design! Check out our full speaking panel here: https://t.co/7cPCBdS8rD #microbiome #LMM5 pic.twitter.com/TwFonHkOKK
— London Microbiome (@LMicrobiome) January 6, 2017
Dr Claire Steves of the Department of Twin Research opened the evening by introducing the five speakers from across the UK.
Great exciting program and full house for today's London Microbiome Meeting @kingsmedicine @TwinsUKres #LMM5 pic.twitter.com/FichGOmJKA
— tim spector (@timspector) January 30, 2017
First up was Dr David MacIntyre, a lecturer in Systems Reproductive Medicine at Imperial College London. He gave a fascinating talk on the role of vaginal microbiota in preterm births. The vaginal microbiome changes in pregnancy, losing its diversity to become largely dominated by the Lactobacillus species. A diverse vaginal flora during pregnancy is associated with pre-term delivery.
Great talk by @drdmacintyre on preterm pregnancy and microbiota #LMM5
— London Microbiome (@LMicrobiome) January 30, 2017
#LMM5 Macintyre using novel chemical profiles to rapidly test whether healthy lactobacillus present in at risk pregnant women
— tim spector (@timspector) January 30, 2017
Follwing this was Dr Tom Marrs from King’s College London’s Paediatric Allergy department. He shared his current research on the association between owning furry pets and the development of food allergies in young children. Allowing dogs into your child’s bedroom from a very young age promotes a diverse gut microbiome, reducing the development of food allergies later on in life.
RT LMicrobiome "Is the hygiene hypothesis tosh? Dr Tom Marrs discusses the affect of living with pets on infants microbiota #LMM5"
— British Gut (@BritishGut) January 30, 2017
#LMM5 Tom Marrs reports EATS study that shows that having a dog in the house before age 3 months is a major protective factor for allergies
— tim spector (@timspector) January 30, 2017
We were delighted to host Professor Fiona Powrie from the University of Oxford as our third speaker. Professor Powrie discussed interactions between the immune system and the gut.
RT LMicrobiome "Is the hygiene hypothesis tosh? Dr Tom Marrs discusses the affect of living with pets on infants microbiota #LMM5"
— British Gut (@BritishGut) January 30, 2017
Dr Joy Leng from the University of Surrey provided wonderful insight to her PhD work on the relationship between the equine microbiome and a commonly lethal equine ailment, grass sickness.
On the train to London to speak at King's college about horse gut/faecal microbiota #LMM5
— Joy Leng (@Joy_Leng) January 30, 2017
RT LMicrobiome "Joy_Leng presents insights into the equine microbiota and grass sickness #LMM5"
— British Gut (@BritishGut) January 30, 2017
Our final speaker rounded off the evening with humour and charm, sharing his public engagement project, ‘Good Germs, Bad Germs’. Dr Jamie Lorimer is a social scientist exploring how the microbiome is being made public and how public participation can be achieved.
What lives in your kitchen? @jsplorimer presents exciting public engagement project good germs, bad germs #LMM5
— London Microbiome (@LMicrobiome) January 30, 2017
Thank you to all the attendees, speakers and the London Microbiome team for putting on a most enjoyable evening and for creating a space to network and exchange ideas. See you in June!
Previous meetings:
LMM2016 (Summer) (#LMM2015) 21st June 2016
Speakers
-Prof Aedin Cassidy - University of East Anglia
-Prof Alessandra Cervino - Enterome
-Dr Nicholas Illot - University of Oxford
-Dr Elizabeth Witherden - King's College London
-Dr Filipe Cabreiro - UCL
-Dr Stefano Andreozzi - King's College London
-Dr Caroline Ovadia - King's College London
LMM2015 (Winter) (#LMM2015) 7th December 2015
Speakers
-Prof Tim Spector - King's College London
-Prof Jonathan Luke Heeney - Cambridge University
-Prof Elaine Holmes - Imperial College
-Dr Lesley Hoyles - Imperial College & University of Westminster
-Dr Claire Steves - King's College London
-Dr James Goedert - NIH USA
-Dr. Helen Alexander - King's College London
-Liam Shaw - UCL
To see what happened: Click Here
LMM2015 (Summer) (#LMM2015) 28th May 2015
Speakers
-Prof Tim Spector - King's College London
-Dr Michael Cox - Imperial College
-Dr Gerard Clarke - University College Cork
-Dr Alex Mitchell - EBI
-Dr Protima Amon - Queen Mary University
-Dr Richard Brown - Imperial College
-Dr Emily Stolarczyk - King's College London
-Michelle Beaumont - King's College London
To see what happened: Click Here
LMM2014 (#LMicrobiome) 12th June 2014
Speakers
-Dr Marc-Emmanuel Dumas - Imperial College
-Professor William Wade - Queen Mary University
-Professor Kevin Whelan - King’s College London
-Dan Staines - EBI
-Professor Dusko Ehrlich - King’s College London
-Samantha Stone - Reading University
-Catherine MacDonald - Aberdeen University
To see what happened: Click Here