Speakers & agenda

Provisional timetable

(Subject to change)

Venue: Edward Boyle Auditorium, JdP, St Hilda’s College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Time Zone: All times mentioned refer to British Standard (BST) – London/GMT +01:00.

World Time Converter: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com

NB: Due to the hybrid nature of the agenda and the wide geographical locations of our speakers, it may not have always been possible to group similar presentations together.

DAY 1: Monday 05th September

0920: Housekeeping

0930: Welcome by the Conference Chair

Session 1: Phage-host interactions-1

0940: Dr Antonia Sagona (V), Associate Professor, Department Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Understanding E.coli phages’ and their hosts’ localization and resistance

1000: Professor Lotta-Riina Sundberg, Scientific Director of Nanoscience Center & Associate Professor, Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Characteristics of FLiP-type ssDNA phages and their prevalence in the boreal freshwater environment

1020: Dr Gabriel Magno de Freitas Almeida, Associate Professor of Marine Bioprospecting, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

Phage-bacteria interactions in mucosal conditions

1040: Dr Martine Camilla Holst Sørensen, Assistant Professor, Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Adaptable host recognition of Fletchervirus phages infecting Campylobacter jejuni

1100: Refreshment break and networking

Session 2: Emerging phage projects

1130: Dr Ahlam Alsaadi (V), Postdoctoral Researcher, Infectious Diseases Research Department, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center &  King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Towards Promising Antimicrobial Alternatives: The Future of Bacteriophage Research and Development in Saudi Arabia

1150: Professor Ben Temperton, Associate Professor of Microbiology, School of Biosciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

The Citizen Phage Library – Hunting for Holes of Hope with Citizen Science

Keynote-1

1210: Professor Rob Lavigne, Professor, Laboratory of Gene Technology,  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Phage genome Monopoly: understanding the board

Session 3: Phage-host interactions-2

1240: Dr Ville-Petri Friman, Reader, Department of Biology, University of York, York, UK

Phage-plant pathogen interactions in the rhizosphere

1300: Lunch break and networking

1400: Dr Mojgan Rabiey, Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Understanding the mechanisms of phage-bacteria coevolution

1420: Miss Mary Eliza, Graduate Research Student, Arthur Willis Environment Centre, School of Biosciences, The University of Sheffield, Western Bank, S10 2TN

Can temperate phages improve rhizobial inoculants?

1440: Dr Franklin Nóbrega, Lecturer in Microbiology, Microbial Interactions Lab, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus, Southampton, UK

Defence systems cooperate to increase anti-phage activity in E. coli

Session 4: Therapy and immunology

1500: Dr Bob Blasdel (V), Research Director, Precision Phage Therapy, Vesale Bioscience, Noville-sur-Mehaigne, Belgium

What exactly do we mean by phage sensitivity, and how should we detect it for personalized phage therapy in routine practice?

1520: Professor Liam Fanning, Professor & Director, Molecular Virology Diagnostic & Research Laboratory, University College Cork, Cork, Republic of Ireland

Bovine Immunebiome

1540: Professor Krystyna Dabrowska, Professor, Phage Therapy Unit, Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Wrocław, Poland

Phage in the environment of animal and human gastrointestinal tracts: environmental pressure and immune responses

1600: Refreshment break and networking

1620: Dr Aoife O’Sullivan, Clinician, Department of Medicine, Clinical Sciences Building, Cork University Hospital, Cork, Ireland

The Immune Profile of the Microbiome, an exploration the small and large bowel

Keynote-2

1640: Professor Graham Hatfull (V), Eberly Family Professor of Biotechnology and HHMI Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

From petri dish to patient: Mycobacteriophages and their therapeutic potential

1710: Mr Tejas Dharmaraj, Graduate Research Student, Bollyky Lab, Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Counting bacteriophages and predicting their bioactivity using Dynamic Light Scattering

1730: Close of Day 1

1900: Networking dinner (by prior booking or invitation)

DAY 2: Tuesday 06th September

0930: Welcome

Session 5: Veterinary applications

0940: Dr Janet Nale (V), Researcher/Lecturer, Epidemiology Research Unit, Department of Veterinary and Animal Science, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), Inverness, UK

All hope is not lost: development of a bacteriophage cocktail to control Salmonella biofilms under chicken, pig and human gut conditions

1000: Professor Lone Brøndsted, Professor in Phage Biology and Biocontrol, Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Novel phage-derived antimicrobials

1020: Dr Michela Gambino, Assistant Professor, Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Denmark

Phage therapy as a solution to porcine post-weaning diarrhoea

1040: Dr Sindy Burgold-Voigt, Graduate Research Student, Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz-IPHT), Jena, Germany

Characterization of an enterotoxin E carrying Staphylococcus aureus isolate from an eurasian badger (Meles meles)

1100: Refreshment break and networking

1130: Dr Linda Guantai, Research Associate, Animal and Human Health Program, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya

Kenyan Salmonella Phages Can Reverse Antibiotic Resistance in Field Strains of Salmonella enterica

Keynote 3:

1150: Professor Aidan Coffey, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Munster Technological University, & Adjunct Professor, APC Microbiome Institute, Cork, Republic of Ireland

Ten years of bacteriophage research at Munster Technological University

Keynote 4:

1220: Professor Martha Clokie, Professor of Microbiology, Department of Genetics & Genome Biology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

From the ocean to bladders; a history of bacteriophage research leading to the first UK Bacteriophage Centre

1250: Lunch break and networking

Session 6: Molecular genetics and therapy

1340: Dr Zeinab Hosseinidoust (V), Assistant Professor & Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophage Bioengineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Putting bacteriophages to work

1400: Professor Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén, Professor of Computational Phage Biodiscovery, The GLOBE Institute, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen,  Copenhagen, Denmark

Phage genomes – taming the unrecognisable, uncategorisable and uncomparable

1420: Miss Karolina Ciemińska, Graduate Research Student, Department of Microbiology, University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland

Molecular mechanism of thermostability of Ts2631 endolysin from bacteriophage vB_Tsc2631 infecting Thermus Scotoductus

1520: Mr Nathan Burton, Graduate Research Student, School of Life Sciences, Gibbet Hill Campus, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Novel bacteriophages targeting Staphylococcus for treating antibiotic resistant Prosthetic joint biofilm infections

1540: Closing remarks by Professor Martha Clokie and discussion

1600: End of the conference