Human African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness, caused by the extracellular protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei, is characterized by the manipulation of the host's immune response through a myriad of strategies to ensure parasite invasion and persistence. One of these consists of abolishing host beneficial and detrimental B cell responses. However, to date, the parasite-mediated molecular and cellular mechanisms leading to B cell death remain poorly understood. Therefore, using various “omics” technologies, we propose to use this parasite-associated peculiar property of B cells as an innovative approach to identify the mechanisms implicated in malignant chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and non-CLL B cell death, following infection. Together the identification of these mechanisms may lead to new/combined curing approaches against B cell cancers and various pathogens.
From 11 Oct 2024 11:30
Until 11 Oct 2024 12:30
Location FSVM I building, seminar room
Speaker Carl De Trez
Affiliation Brussels Center for Immunology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.
Host Bart Lambrecht
Stream View streamStream ID 816 7731 8944
Stream Password 672056
About the speaker Carl De Trez received his PhD in 2003 from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium), under the supervision of Jacques Urbain studying the mechanisms implicated in the development of a protective immune response against E.coli bacterium and Leishmania parasites, with a special emphasis on the importance of conventional dendritic cell (cDC) maturation process during in vivo host-pathogen interaction.
In 2003, he joined Carl Ware’s lab as a post-doctoral fellow and later as a Research scientist at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (San Diego, CA, USA) to study the importance of different TNFR superfamily members in the response to a viral pathogen and cDC homeostasis.
Back in Belgium in 2006 and prior joining the VUB, Carl De Trez enrolled the Laboratory of Parasitology directed by Yves Carlier at the ULB to start studying the role of inflammatory DC subset within the context of Leishmania infection. Since 2016 he is a Research Professor in the Immunoparasitology group within the Brussel Center for Immunology (BCIM) directed by Jo Van Ginderachter at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, Belgium), studying the mechanisms implicated in the development of various immuno-pathologies after infection with African trypanosomes (AT) parasite, the causative agent of Sleeping Sickness in human. In particular, his main research goal focus at understanding the mechanisms implicated in AT parasite-induced death of detrimental B cells, such as auto-immune and malignant B cells.
Since 2022 Carl De Trez is the president of the Belgian Society for Parasitology and Protistology (BSPP). He has also been assisting the European commission for numerous years by acting for example as “Vice Chair” within the context of various Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) actions, such as doctoral networks (DN) and post-doctoral fellowship (PF), and more recently as “Evaluator” for European Innovation Council (EIC) under the Horizon Europe programme. He has authored more than 60 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals, is serving a variety of editorial roles in many journals and has recently co-organized the 5th European B cell Network meeting in Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands (July 2024) that is reserved to European PIs.
