Professor Simon Carding

Upon completing postgraduate work at the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Research Centre in Harrow, Professor Carding “emigrated” to the USA to take up a postdoctoral position at New York University School of Medicine, and then at Yale University as a Howard Hughes Fellow in the Immunobiology Group at Yale University with Profs Kim Bottomly and Charlie Janeway Jr. While at Yale an interest in gamma-delta (γδ) T cells was acquired working closely with Adrian Hayday on molecular genetics and then with Prof. Peter Doherty to establish their role in (viral) infectious disease.

He left Yale after five years to take up a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he developed a research interest in mucosal and GI-tract immunology, performing studies in germfree mice with Prof John Cebra that helped establish the role of gut microbes in the aetiology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

After 15 years in the USA, he returned to the UK to take up the Chair in Molecular Immunology at the University of Leeds where he established a new research programme on commensal gut bacteria and Bacteroides genetics leading to the development of a Bacteroides drug delivery platform that is being used for developing new interventions for IBD and for mucosal vaccination.

In 2008 he was recruited by UEA and IFR to develop a gut research programme, taking up the Chair of Mucosal Immunology at UEA-MED and the position of head of the Gut Biology Research Programme at IFR, which later became part of the Gut Health and Food Safety (GHFS) Programme.

GHFS research covers a broad area of gut biology including epithelial cell physiology, mucus and glycobiology, mucosal immunology, commensal microbiology, foodborne bacterial pathogens, and mathematical modelling and bioinformatics. The success of this programme has led to the establishment of the Gut Microbes and Health research programme that is integral to the research agenda of The Quadram Institute.

• References

  • Professor Simon Carding
  • Quadram Institute Research targets

Professor Maureen Hanson

USA

Maureen Hanson is Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Previously she was on the faculty of the Department of Biology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where she also completed her Ph.D. degree. While most of her prior research has concerned cell and molecular biology in plant cells, she began a research program on ME/CFS after noting at a 2007 IACFS meeting the paucity of molecular biologists studying the illness. Her lab was part of the 2012 multicenter study organized by Ian Lipkin's group at Columbia University to assess the actual role of XMRV in ME/CFS. Dr. Hanson has a current project to examine the microbiome of ME/CFS patients and controls, in collaboration with Dr. Ruth Ley (Cornell Microbiology) and Susan Levine, M.D. (Manhattan, NY). Dr Levine is also collaborating with Dr. Hanson on an immune cell gene expression project that involves Dr. Fabien Campagne and Dr. Rita Shaknovich at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City. Dr. Hanson's third project concerns analysis of blood samples from individuals performing a two-day cardiopulmonary exercise test at Ithaca College under the supervision of Dr. Betsy Keller.

Professor Jonas Bergquist

Sweden

Professor Begquist has a background as MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Neuroscience , Sahlgrenska University Hospital and the University of Gothenburg. Since 1999 , he has been a researcher in Uppsala, Sweden, and in 2005 was appointed professor of analytical chemistry and neurochemistry at the Department of Chemistry - BMC , Uppsala University. From 2011 he worked also as an adjunct professor of pathology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Professor Bergquist is also one of the founding members of the European ME Research Group (EMERG).

Professor Nancy Klimas

USA

Director, Institute for Neuro Immune Medicine, Nova Southeastern University.
Director, Clinical Immunology Research, Miami VAMC
Professor of Medicine, Department of Clinical Immunology, College of Osteopathic Medicine, Nova Southeastern University
Chair, Department of Clinical Immunology, College of Osteopathic Medicine, Nova Southeastern University
Professor Emerita, University of Miami, School of Medicine
In for her research and clinical efforts in multi-symptom disorders, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), War Illness (GWI), Fibromyalgia, and other Neuro Immune Disorders. She is immediate past president of the International Association for CFS and ME (IACFS/ME), a professional organization of clinicians and investigators, and is also a member of the VA Research Advisory Committee for GWI, the NIH P2P CFS Committee, and the Institute of Medicine ME/CFS Review Panel. Dr. Klimas has advised three Secretaries of Health and Human Services, including Kathleen Sabelius, during her repeated service on the Health and Human Services CFS Advisory Committee. Dr. Klimas has been featured on Good Morning America, in USA Today and the New York Times.

Dr Violetta Renesca

USA

Violetta Renesca is a Board Certified Adult Nurse Practitioner focusing on functional and integrative approaches to treat patients with complex neuro-inflammatory conditions. She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Nova Southeastern University and worked as a staff nurse and charge nurse on the Progressive Care Unit at Broward Health. After receiving her Master’s Degree from Florida International University as an Adult Nurse Practitioner, she joined a large multi-specialty geriatric center in Fort Lauderdale. Violetta obtained a Doctorate in Nursing Practice from the University of North Florida. Violetta’s focus at the INIM includes myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War illness, chronic infections, metabolic syndrome, chronic pain, environmental illness, detoxification, and autoimmune diseases. As a certified practitioner for the Institute for Functional Medicine, she works with patients to create personalized treatment plans that addresses root causes of chronic illness. She is also the Director of the Veterans Clinic where she sees patients with Gulf War illness. Additionally, she is a member of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners as well as the Institute for Functional Medicine.
https://www.nova.edu/nim/clinic/renesca-bio.html

Professor Nancy Klimas

USA

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Dr Dezső Modos

UK

Dr Dezső Modos is an Imperial College Research Fellow in the Systems Medicine division of the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction. He completed his medical degree at Semmelweis University and a minor in bionics at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University. Later he obtained his PhD at the Semmelweis University on network biology. His primary focus was the intracellular signalling network in cancer and understanding the role of paralogues in signalling. After his PhD he moved to Cambridge and learned cheminformatics. He used network biology to understand and predict compound synergy in cancer. Here he also learned about various cheminformatic techniques, which he is adapting for his fellowship. The current inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) therapies maintain remission only in around 30% of cases forming therapeutic celling. His fellowship aims to find the right drug to the right patient in IBD. Similarly, using the targets of IBD drugs as a source node can build a drug specific network footprint. The comparison of patient-specific disease and drug networks, much like connectivity mapping, can aid in identifying the correct drug for each patient. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in inflammatory bowel disease are often in the non-coding region of the genome. He and his colleagues developed a tool called iSNP (https://github.com/korcsmarosgroup/iSNP) which can map these single nucleotide polymorphisms to regulatory regions and through that SNP affected genes. From the SNP affected genes, patient specific signalling networks, individual pathogenetic pathways and patient specific network footprints can be constructed. Already, he used this method to understand ulcerative colitis pathogenesis. See https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.modos