Francqui Chair award

European Research Council funding for the laboratory

VIB press release:

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded 4 VIB scientists a consolidator grant: Kevin Verstrepen (VIB/KU Leuven), Adrian Liston (VIB/KU Leuven), Mohamed Lamkanfi (VIB/UGent) and Daniël Van Damme (VIB/UGent). These 'consolidator grants' are rewarded to scientists (PhD 7-12 years) who already showed that they are able to run their own lab. The European Research Council's grant allows them to anchor the start of a high risk/high gain program, feasible through this recognition of nearly 2 Mio€ per scientist.

ERC grants
Right from the start, VIB recognized the importance of ERC for its own mission, given our obvious synergy at the science policy level:
- Frontier research
- Excellence as the only selection criterion
- Bottom-up, all fields
- Support for the individual scientist
- International peer review

Every year VIB encourages group leaders to apply for  ERC grants and supports them when they do. With these four new ERC grants VIB has reached the impressive number of 34 ERC-grants.

Recognition for four VIB researchers

Adrian Liston (VIB/KU Leuven) who will develop new molecular tools to study the immune system in the brain during neurodegenerative disease, says: “This ERC grant offers me an exciting opportunity to start a major initiative in looking at the interaction between the immune system and the brain.”

Kevin Verstrepen (VIB/KU Leuven) will investigate whether cells can somehow remember past experiences, and whether such past experiences influence how cells respond to their current environment.  In other words, he wants to find out whether living cells, including simple cells such as microbes as well as more complex cells in animals, have a basic form of memory (that is obviously more simple and restricted from the kind of memory associated with a brain in higher animals and humans). His reaction: “The ERC funding provides a fantastic boost to our research, because the amount of money we receive from Europe is substantial enough to recruit a complete team of scientists to pursue a new line of research that really pushes the boundaries of our current knowledge of biology.”  

Mo Lamkanfi (VIB/UGent): ‘Our ERC project will map the broad communication between inflammasomes and the diverse programmed cell death mechanisms in immune cells. This will help to define novel approaches to treat autoinflammatory and -immune diseases by converting pathological cell death into non-inflammatory responses.’

Daniël Van Damme (VIB/UGent): “Achieving an ERC grant consolidates my independent research position within the VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology and Ghent University. It provides me with the means to unravel why the process of endocytosis evolved differently in plants compared to animal and yeast cells.” With his T-REX project he will combine ultrastructural analysis of the main endocytic adaptor complex in plants with proteomic identification of its endocytic cargo and functional cell biological analysis of its subunits.

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If anyone is interested in my advice on applying for ERC grants, here are the hints I wrote in 2010 after going through the ERC Start grant process.

Dr Karel-Lodewijk Verleysen Prize

Professor Adrian Liston has been selected for the Prijs Dr. Karel-Lodewijk Verleysen for his work on the development of a safe and effective immune system. Professor Liston received his PhD from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, for seminal work on the role of the thymus in eliminating autoreactive T cells from the repoirtoire, a process known as immunological tolerance. His doctoral research identified defects in thymic tolerance as a key mechanism in the development of autoimmune disease.

Following his PhD in 2005, Professor Liston moved to the University of Washington in the United States of America in order to continue his research on T cell tolerance, performing some of the earliest experiments on the generation of regulatory T cells, a cell type that has come to dominate the field of autoimmunity in recent years.

Professor Liston was recruited to Belgium in 2009 by the VIB and University of Leuven, where he became a professor (hoofddocent) at the age of 28. In the last 6 years he has built up a laboratory of 15 researchers, dedicated to understanding the mechanisms of immune tolerance failure during autoimmunity and immunodeficiency.

Professor Liston has published more than 90 research papers, over a diverse set of topics in immunology and genetics and with publications in the top international journals such as Nature Immunology, Nature Medicine and Immunity. Of the many important findings, I would like to briefly highlight just four.

First, in collaboration with Cambridge University, Professor Liston identified a new cell type in 2011, the follicular regulatory T cell. This new cell type controls the strength of the antibody responses to vaccination, and is now thought to be important in diseases such as lupus.

Second, in 2012 Professor Liston’s research identified one of the key mechanisms that control the atrophy of the thymus with age. This reduction in the activity of the thymus is thought to be behind the poor vaccine responses of older persons. Professor Liston demonstrated that small non-coding RNA particles, known as microRNA, control the size of the thymus with age by altering the response to normal gut bacteria.

Third, Professor Liston has continued to work on the properties of regulatory T cells. In 2013 he published a seminal paper which systematically tested the signals that drive the life and death of regulatory T cells, identifying the key pathway that controls the quality of immune tolerance. This work is now being translated into immune therapeutics, where regulatory T cells are being seen as a high potential strategy to stop graft versus host disease.

Finally, Professor Liston is actively involved in the medical genetics of immune disorders. In the last few years Professor Liston has been working with clinicians at UZ Leuven to unravel the genetics behind patients with severe early-onset autoinflammation and immunodeficiency. This work has brought next generation sequencing into the diagnostic arena in immunology at UZ Leuven, and has identified several new immune disorders, such as the combined immunodeficiency and vasculopathy disorder caused by ADA2 mutation and several new genetic causes for immunodeficiency. Professor Liston is working hard to bring these advances in genetics into the standard diagnostic process, so that the genetic mechanism can inform on treatment options.

During his 6 years in Belgium, Professor Liston has received several major funding awards, including a Marie Curie Fellowship, a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Career Development Award and a European Research Council Start Grant, bringing more than €3 million of international research funding into Belgium. He is a member of many national and international consortium and founded and directs the flow cytometry core facility in Leuven. Professor Liston is also active in science education and community outreach. For these contribution to medical research in Belgium, Professor Adrian Liston has been selected for the 2014 Prijs Dr. Karel-Lodewijk Verleysen.

Update on Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 1:15PM by Adrian Liston

Dutch translation of the award citation:

Professor Adrian Liston werd voorgedragen voor de Prijs Dr. Karel-Lodewijk Verleysen voor zijn onderzoek naar de ontwikkeling van een gericht en effectief afweersysteem. Professor Liston voltooide zijn promotieonderzoek aan de Australian National University in Canberra, Australië. Hier verrichtte hij baanbrekend onderzoek naar de rol van de thymus bij het elimineren van zelf-reactieve T cellen uit het T cel repertoire – een proces dat bekend staat als immunologische tolerantie. Hij toonde aan dat bepaalde defecten in de tolerantiemechanismen in de thymus ten grondslag liggen aan de ontwikkeling van auto-immuunziekten.

Na het behalen van zijn doctoraat in 2005 zette Professor Liston zijn onderzoek naar T cel tolerantie voort aan The University of Washington in de USA. Hij onderzocht hier als een van de eerste wetenschappers de ontwikkeling van regulatoire T cellen, een type cel dat de laatste jaren het onderzoek naar auto-immuunziekten is gaan domineren.

Professor Liston werd in 2009 door het VIB en de Katholieke Universiteit van Leuven in dienst genomen als hoogleraar, op de zeer jonge leeftijd van 28 jaar. Gedurende de laatste 6 jaar heeft hij een laboratorium opgebouwd waarin hij leiding geeft aan 15 onderzoekers. Zijn laboratorium heeft als focus het ontrafelen van de mechanismen die aanleiding geven tot het falen van immunologische tolerantie bij auto-immuunziekten en immuundeficiënties.

Professor Liston heeft meer dan 90 wetenschappelijke artikelen gepubliceerd, waarin een breed scala aan immunologische en genetische onderwerpen aan de orde komt. Zijn publicaties zijn verschenen in invloedrijke internationale wetenschappelijke tijdschriften, zoals Nature Immunology, Nature Medicine and Immunity. Van zijn vele belangrijke ontdekkingen wil ik er vier kort uitlichten.

Als eerste heeft Professor Liston in 2011, in samenwerking met de Universiteit van Cambridge in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, een nieuw celtype ontdekt, genaamd de folliculaire regulatoire T cel. Dit celtype reguleert de mate van antilichaam respons na vaccinatie, en men vermoedt dat dit celtype een belangrijke rol speelt in auto-immuunziekten zoals lupus.

Als tweede heeft Professor Liston in 2012 één van de mechanismen geïdentificeerd die ten grondslag liggen aan het atrofiëren van de thymus tijdens veroudering. Het gebrek aan een goede vaccinatie respons bij ouderen kan te wijten zijn aan deze afname van thymusactiviteit. Professor Liston toonde aan dat de leeftijdsgebonden grootte van de thymus wordt gereguleerd door kleine stukjes niet-coderend RNA, of micro-RNA, doordat deze de respons tegen normale darmbacteriën aanpassen.

Als derde heeft Professor Liston zijn eerdere werk aan regulatoire T cellen voortgezet. In 2013 publiceerde hij een grensverleggend artikel waarin systematisch de signaalmoleculen werden bestudeerd welke beslissen over leven en dood in regulatoire T cellen. Tijdens dit onderzoek identificeerde hij het fundamentele mechanisme dat de mate van immunologische tolerantie bepaalt. Deze resultaten worden nu toegepast bij de ontwikkeling van therapieën voor graft versus host disease, waarbij het gebruik van regulatoire T cellen beschouwd worden als een veelbelovende nieuwe strategie.

Als laatste is Professor Liston actief betrokken bij het medisch-genetisch onderzoek van immuundeficiënties. Hij heeft de laatste jaren nauw samengewerkt met de clinici van het UZ Leuven om de genetische achtergrond van jonge patiënten met ernstige auto-immuun-ontstekingsziekten en immuundeficiënties te bepalen. Dit project heeft “Next Generation Sequencing” geïntroduceerd als nieuwe diagnostische test in het UZ Leuven. Verschillende nieuwe ziekten van het immuunsysteem zijn inmiddels ontdekt, zoals de gecombineerde immuundeficiëntie en vasculopathie die wordt veroorzaakt door een mutatie in het ADA2 gen. Ook voor andere immuundeficiënties zijn verscheidene nieuwe genetische oorzaken gevonden. Professor Liston zou graag zien dat deze nieuwe genetische technieken toegevoegd worden aan de gangbare diagnostiek, zodat het genetisch mechanisme achter deze ziekten wellicht aanwijzingen kan verstrekken voor verbeterde therapeutische opties.

Gedurende de 6 jaar die Professor Liston nu in België werkt is hij zeer succesvol geweest in het verkrijgen van onderzoeksfinanciering. Met de toekenning van een Marie Curie Fellowship, een Career Development Award van de Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, en een Start Grant van de European Research Council heeft hij meer dan 3 miljoen euro aan internationale onderzoeksfinanciering voor België verzekerd. Hij is lid van vele nationale en internationale consortia en heeft in Leuven een core faciliteit voor flowcytometrie opgericht, waarvan hij directeur is. Professor Liston is actief in het wetenschapsonderwijs en in wetenschapscommunicatie, met als doel een breed publiek bij het wetenschappelijk onderzoek te betrekken. Voor deze bijdragen aan het medisch onderzoek in België, is Professor Adrian Liston voorgedragen voor de 2014 Prijs Dr. Karel-Lodewijk Verleysen.

Graduation of Dr Lei Tian

Congratulations to Dr Lei Tian, who graduated from her PhD in our lab!

(congratulations was a little late, but so was her thesis!)

Erasmus scholars

The Erasmus program is a wonderful European project which drives brain-circulation around Europe. Our lab takes at least two Erasmus scholars every year, teaching them skills which will hopefully serve them well in their future career. In return we get skilled help in our projects, a network of future collaborators across Europe, and (last but not least) all of the advantages that come with intellectual diversity. Our last Erasmus scholar was Alper Çevirgel from Turkey, who drove forward the production of nanobodies in the lab and left us with a great protocol for Turkish coffee.

No separation of medical and mental health

Reporting on our research:

2005 NHMRC/RG Menzies Fellow, Professor Adrian Liston, is one of the researchers in an important study which provides new insights into the cause of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), underscoring the connection between psychological factors and the immune system.

Adrian, who is now Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Leuven and the VIB, Belgium says “The most important message from this research is that we cannot separate medical and mental health. The two influence each other; in our study high levels of anxiety or depression increase susceptibility to gastrointestinal infection and long-term complications.”

The findings in this latest research are based on an investigation of a drinking water contamination incident in Belgium in 2010, and have been published in the leading international medical journal Gut.

Described by Professor Liston as an accidental experiment, the study was set up to look at the long-term effects of an outbreak of gastroenteritis after 18,000 people came into contact with contaminated drinking water in the towns of Schelle and Hemiksem.

As reported in news-medical.net, following the patients from the initial contamination to a year after the outbreak, the researchers could assess what factors changed the risk of long-term complications. They found that individuals with higher levels of anxiety or depression prior to the water contamination developed gastrointestinal infections of increased severity. They also had greater risk of long-term IBS.

Professor Liston says there are broad applications for these research findings.

“There is a strong tendency to compartmentalise society - economy, welfare, health, education, etc. In reality, each individual moves around all these different sectors of society on a daily basis, so each influences the other.

“The Whitehall Study, a major UK study that is still ongoing, found that the degree of autonomy people experience in their jobs has a major influence on mortality. Other studies demonstrate the link between un/under-employment or social disenfranchisement on health. These effects are rarely taken into account when designing public policy. For example, a policy change to welfare that decreases financial security may save the government a few dollars in the welfare budget, but it will cause much larger increases in the health budget due to the flow-over effects of anxiety.

“What we really need is an integrated strategy that takes into account urban design, the welfare safety net, public health, employment structures and recreation”, Professor Liston said.

Menzies Foundation interview

I was interviewed recently by the Menzies Foundation, of whom I am the 2005 alumni. Here is the Q&A.

What is your job?

Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Leuven (Belgium) and Director of Translational Immunology in the Flemish Biotechnology Institute.

What is the most fulfilling aspect of your work?

Discovery. Science is really a terrible career in so many ways, and yet it attracts many of the best and brightest because it holds out the promise of discovery. There is nothing quite so satisfying as unravelling a new gene network that leads to diabetes, or finding the mutation that holds the key to curing a sick child.

What is the book that has influenced you the most?

Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre should be a must-read for anyone in the medical research industry. It is a book that is shocking in how it reveals systemic defects in pharmaceutical research, development and sales, and yet it is also eminently practical (even hopeful) in giving simple advice that would remedy the situation.

Who would you most like to meet and why?

Sir David Attenborough. A gentleman in the literal sense of the world, since childhood Sir David has nurtured in me (and countless others) a love of biology. For me, Sir David is the world’s most effective advocate for animal rights, environmentalism, evolution and atheism. All this is perhaps because he rarely talks about any of these topics directly; he cultivates the fertile mind and plants the seeds of knowledge.

What are your passions outside of work?

As Rosalind Franklin said, “Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated”.

How do you describe leadership?

Leadership is moving forward in a way that inspires others to move forward with you. A scientific leader will open up a new field of research, opening the gates for others to follow and build upon. The best scientific leaders are those allow others to take the lead in building once the new field is open and look instead for the next opportunity for breakthrough.

Who would make a better leader? Engineer, doctor, researcher or lawyer and why?

The effectiveness of a leader will always depend on the context, and the individual’s qualities will always trump that of professional training. That said, different professions do hone different skills. Engineers apply proven rules with precision, doctors are trained at pattern recognition and decision making, and lawyers are trained to find loopholes to prosecute their agenda.  As a researcher myself, I would say our most important attribute is the ability to critically assess our own opinion based on data available, and, most importantly, change our opinion if new data does not support it. Perhaps over the short-term the training given to engineers, doctors or lawyers may be the most efficient, but for long-term progress, nothing beats the scientific approach of data over ideology.

If you were Prime Minister of Australia, what would you do first?

Looking at the bigger picture, the most important change needed is to bring the scientific approach into policy creation and political decision making. By this I mean an approach to policy where we start by critically looking at all the data (and not just the data that supports our ideology), assessing the effectiveness of previous policy approaches (with an international eye), designing new policy (that include measurements of effectiveness), and tweaking policy when failures are identified. This scientific approach to policy should be standard, but many of the failures of the current government stem from a triumph of ideology over data. Australia’s terrible record on the environment (such as our failure of leadership on climate change) stems from a failure to accept the consensus data on the scale of the problem. Our record on refugee rights is not only a moral failure, it is also a data failure – a key policy of the government is to keep data on the abysmal conditions of refugees away from the voting public. Opponents of same-sex marriage prophesize varied doomsday scenarios without looking at the decade-long experiences in Europe. Economic policies seem more tailored to the electoral cycle than to long-term objectives, and so forth.    

Graduation of Dr Anh Nuygen

Congratulations to Dr Anh Nuygen, who graduated with her PhD from our lab!

Anxiety increases the risk of gastrointestinal infection and long-term complications

A study in the aftermath of 2010 tap water contamination in the Belgian towns of Schelle and Hemiksem provides valuable insights into the cause of irritable bowel syndrome. A team comprised of scientists at VIB and KU Leuven has made significant progress in uncovering the connection between psychological factors and the immune system. Their findings are based on an investigation of a massive drinking water contamination incident in Schelle and Hemiksem in 2010, and are now published in the leading international medical journal Gut.

In December 2010, the Belgian communities of Schelle and Hemiksem in the province of Antwerp faced an outbreak of gastroenteritis, with more than 18,000 people exposed to contaminated drinking water. During the outbreak, VIB and KU Leuven set up a scientific task force to study the incident’s long-term effects, led by Guy Boeckxstaens and Adrian Liston.

Seizing an unexpected opportunity

Adrian Liston: “The water contamination in Schelle and Hemiksem was an ‘accidental experiment’ on a scale rarely possible in medical research. By following the patients from the initial contamination to a year after the outbreak we were able to find out what factors altered the risk of long-term complications.”

Anxiety and depression affect immune system

The scientists found that individual with higher levels of anxiety or depression prior to the water contamination developed gastrointestinal infections of increased severity. The same individuals also had an increased risk of developing the long-term complication of irritable bowel syndrome, with intermittent abdominal cramps, diarrhea or constipation a year after the initial contamination.

Guy Boeckxstaens: “Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a condition of chronic abdominal pain and altered bowel movements. This is a common condition with large socio-economic costs, yet there is so much that still remains to be discovered about the causes. Our investigation found that that anxiety or depression alters the immune response towards a gastrointestinal infection, which can result in more severe symptoms and the development of chronic irritable bowel syndrome.”

Psychological factors key in preventing long-term complications

The study’s results provide valuable new insight into the cause of irritable bowel syndrome, and underscore the connection between psychological factors and the immune system.

Adrian Liston: “These results once again emphasize the importance of mental health care and social support services. We need to understand that health, society and economics are not independent, and ignoring depression and anxiety results in higher long-term medical costs.”

For more details, see the original publication: Wouters*, Van Wanrooy*, Nguyen*, Dooley, Aguilera-Lizarraga, Van Brabant, Garcia-Perez, Van Oudenhove, Van Ranst, Verhaegen, Liston*, Boeckxstaens*. * shared authorship. Psychological comorbidity increases the risk for postinfectious IBS partly by enhanced susceptibility to develop infectious gastroenteritis. Gut. 2015, in press. 

Update on Wednesday, July 8, 2015 at 7:33PM by Adrian Liston

An article written in Healio on our study