The day after previous network meeting in Berlin (1-2 September 2022), a dedicated training on Successful Grant Writing was organized for the GROWTH fellows and collaborating scientists. Overall, a very interesting and interactive training session with lots of homework and future grant plans. We thank MoKi Analytics and Charite University Berlin for hosting this meeting and training event.

In Tel Aviv (Israel) this summer several GROWTH scientists presented their work at the European Paediatric Surgeon's Association annual congress 2022. The spirit of EUPSA is characterized by the spirit to enhance the capacity to discover, disseminate and apply new knowledge to the benefit of patientss, and we can not agree more with this.

Five GROWTH students participated last week in the 5-day Biobuiness Summer School event organized in Amsterdam to prepare them for a industry-minded career in life sciences.

Nancy Deianavo, ESR-4 in the GROWTH programme, presented her results at the annual ESPHGAN congress. Part of her project focuses on antibiotics and necrotizing enterocolitis and sepsis in a preterm Dutch/Belgian cohort where non-exposure was associated with higher odds for disease.

On World Microbiome Day all things microbial, all around the world are celebrated. International microbiome researchers and microbiome‐literate professionals are introduced to the public to raise awareness of the vibrant and diverse world of microbes and we invite the public and industry professionals to share their thoughts and activities with the microbiome community.

The Theme for World Microbiome Day 2022 is "Celebration of The Microbial World"

The official ESPHGAN Annual Meeting provides stimulating and informative State of the Art and Key Note Lectures from leading experts in gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition. Parallel sessions will comprise of stimulating symposia and oral abstract presentations. A combination of posters and selected ePosters will provide attendees with the opportunity to view and discuss latest results.

GROWTH researcher, Gemma Pitotti, prepared a poster and presented her work at the Digestive Disease Week. Her poster had the title: "Activation and function of epithelial TLR4 and TLR5 in E.coli sepsis in preterms".

Naomi Wieser presented her work at the Digestive Disease Week at the plenary session on Development of the liver, Pancreas and Gastrointestinal Tract. Her presentation title was "Human milk and neonatal gut bacterial derived aryl hidrocarban receptor ligands reduce NFkb and chemokine activation in human fetal organoids".

Several GROWTH fellows are invited to prepare an oral presentation and an abstract for the Digestive Disease Week 2022 (21-24 May 2022). Important and exciting times for them in San Diego.

At the Digestive Disease Week compelling data is presented by Konstantina Zafeiropoulou, PhD student at the Tytgat Institute at Amsterdam UMC and collaborator on GROWTH projects conducted by Hilal Sengul and Lilly Bantavi.

In this review, published by the group of Wouter de Jonge (AMC), the conventional and more recently developed in vitro and ex vivo systems focusing on their applications, advantages, and limitations are summarized.

Several GROWTH researchers are traveling to San Diego in May 2022 to visit the Digestive Disease Week (DDW) and present their intermediate results and discuss with peers about the project and future plans.

Today, the GROWTH Satellite Symposium was organized and with >40 attendants, 3 key-note speakers and 8 presentations of the GROWTH research fellows, the meeting was a major success.

GROWTH partner, TNO recently kicked-off their new Early Life Campaign. This initiatives provides TNO's latest insights, and a comprehensive overview of their expertise and tools to support healthy development early in life.

GROWTH research groups at AMC and VUMC identifed factors may support the clinician to identify infants with increased risk for sNEC, which may facilitate early decisive management and consequently could result in improved prognosis. These findings were obtained from a multi-center case control study.

One of the collaborating PhD students of the GROWTH programme, Konstantina Zafeiropoulou, published a very interesting story on a new study, carried out by researchers at Stanford University that shows that fermented-food diet may increase microbiome diversity and decrease markers of inflammation. In the same study high-fiber diet shows potential in altering gut microbiome functions and modulating immune responses.

Konstantina is currently a PhD candidate at Amsterdam UMC unraveling the role of gut microbiota and long-term dietary patterns in the development of postoperative colorectal anastomotic leakage.

The 10th meeting in the Wellcome Connecting Science series on 13-15 October 2021 will once again bring together leading scientists and clinicians from the fields of microbiology, gastroenterology, neuroscience and public health to discuss the latest developments in this fast-moving area.

In October the next International Symposium on Gut Microbiology will take place as a virtual event.

Event location : Remote

The next GROWTH workshop will be fully remote and will take place from the 16th to the 18th of June 2021.

Research workshop: “Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and molecular imaging workshop with teaching part and individual sessions", organized by the Biofilmcenter, Charité and MoKi Analytics, Berlin.

Academic skills workshop: "Creative thinking: On to new ideas, by Adib Fricke (https://adibfricke.com/de/)

Academic skills / coaching workshop: ‘Shape your future’ by Dorothee Kagelmann.

The training workshop is organized within the framework of the GROWTH Project: Research and Training in Early Life Nutrition to Prevent Disease | H2020 | CORDIS | European Commission, https://growth-horizon2020.eu/

and

the CEMBO Consortium: Combating and Evaluation of Mixed Biofilms | H2020 | CORDIS | European Commission, https://cembo.eu/

On World Microbiome Day all things microbial, all around the world are celebrated. International microbiome researchers are introduced to the public to raise awareness of the vibrant and diverse world of microbes and invite the public and industry professionals to share their thoughts and activities with the microbiome community.

A recently published review by the paediatric surgery group at AMC aggregates the available literature on the incidence of different forms of surgical site infections in infants who needed surgery for abdominal birth defects.

The Gut Microbiota for Health platform with the European Society of Neurogastroenterology and Motility (ESNM) organises an exciting webinar series under the topic: Microbiota and Gut-Brain Connection: A new Frontier in Neurogastroenterology. This free resource is a great opportunity to hear leading worldwide experts presenting the most recent findings on this topic.

The VUMC group of Dr. Tim de Meij discovered strong preclinical microbial alterations underline that gut microbiota is involved in the pathogenesis of late onset sepsis and has large potential as non-invasive biomarkers for early diagnostic purposes. A paper on their longitudinal multicenter case-control study was recently published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

A successful midterm check meeting of the GROWTH programme!

This symposium offers a unique platform for researchers active in this area of biotechnology, from academia and industry alike, to present recent work, to obtain information on new developments and to exchange views with colleagues from all over the world on scientific progress and applications.

As of December 2020 an Expert Lecture Series with "Omics technologies / Bio-informatics analyses) as main training theme is being organized with specialist lecture every other Friday.

On 15-16 April 2021, the 8th edition of Innovation for Health conference with Health Holland as main partner, takes place as an online edition.

The group at the Tytgat Institute for Liver and Intestinal Research in Amsterdam, headed by Prof. Dr. Wouter de Jonge and partner in the GROWTH network recently acquired a large 2.5 milion research grant for the exploration of new therapies for Crohn’s Disease.

Scientific discovery needs diverse perspectives in order to achieve innovative results at the highest level. Appropriate consideration of women or members of underrepresented groups in science at all levels broadens perspectives and opinions and thus contributes to outstanding research.  

Life2021, the NWO conference for the Dutch Life Sciences will be a digital conference. Save the afternoons of 26, 27 and 28 May.

The position for ESR 8 at Moki Analtycs has opened.

A comprehensive analysis of the fecal microbiota and metabolome during a course of EEN therapy in paediatric patients with Crohn's Disease was conducted by the AMC (Tytgat Institute) research groups led by Dr. Jurgen Seppen and Prof. Wouter de Jonge.

"World Prematurity Day" is an awareness day that honours preterm infants and their parents.

This online conference links scientific and clinical experts in the prevention, diagnosis, prediction, and management of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) as well as parents to talk about their experiences. The faculty will be international and include recognised experts in their fields. The presentations will consist of state-of-the-art lectures covering the basic science of underlying mechanisms, along with clinical aspects of prevention and management.

A dysbiosis in gut microbes has been linked to a wide range of chronic diseases. An interesting perspective paper in Science "Modulating gut microbes" describes the current strategies to target gut microbes.

The 6th edition of the Dutch Bioinformatics & Systems Biology (BioSB) conference will be online and organised on October 27-28, 2020.

Mohammed Ghiboub, together with Dr Bruno Sovran and Prof. Wouter de Jonge, published a very nice review on nutritional interventions targeting Tryptophan (Trp) metabolism and Aryl Hydrocarbon-Receptor (AhR) signaling (Nutrients 2020, 12(9), 2846; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12092846).

Recently, a cutting-edge technology was installed at AMC to define the volatiles emitted from the feces of healthy donors and patients with gastrointestinal disease. Owlstone Medical, one of the GROWTH collaborators, has developed this technology and is worldwide one of the pioneering companies in breath biopsy applications in early disease detection and precision medicine.

This course is for anyone interested in subjects related to the human microbiome, how food can influence it, and how this resultantly impacts on human health.

Bringing stakeholders together to shape future research and innovation policy.

The second edition of the X-omics festival “the future is now!” will take place online, on Monday September 28th 2020 from 09.30 – 14.00 CEST.

If you are considering to conduct 16S rRNA gene sequencing or shotgun metagenomic sequencing for your project, this is a nice blogpost shared by Microbiome Insights.

This conference will bring together an international audience of researchers motivated to improve the robustness of scientific research. It will also involve important stakeholder groups: data and services providers, publishers, institutions and funders that are developing policies and tools.

On World Microbiome Day public engagement events are happening worldwide to celebrate the wide diversity of the microbiome and its importance in human and planetary health, as well as in our food system.

The Gut Microbiota for Health team now presents the option to replay the plenary sessions of the summit.

As part of their outreach skills training, the early stage career scientists have created one educative video tutorial.

Gut Microbiota for Health platform grows on the way of connecting the dots between gut microbiota, diet, nutrition and a healthy gut. We interviewed Paul Enck and Rene van den Wijngaard about the evolution of the GMFH project, highlighting the milestones achieved and news to come.

The first GROWTH web-based science meeting is official with 2 presentations from Gemma and Naomi.

From 18 until 19 December 2019 the first GROWTH network meeting was organized by Imperial College London (UK).