The employer-mentor tension
Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 10:07AM I've been reading a lot on the movement to normalise the working conditions of a PhD. A PhD is a lifestyle choice more than a job. The work permeates into your evenings, weekends and holidays. It is difficult to mentally dissociate from the work due to the emotional investment placed in it, which frequently leads to mental health issues. A growing number of students want the PhD to become a more normal "9-5" job, to work just the standard hours they are paid for, in conditions similar to any other profession. This is entirely reasonable.
science careers 
Research connects psychological factors and the immune system
Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 1:10PM Menzies Foundation: The following story is from our publication Taking the lead: 40 stories of impact.
Professor Adrian Liston is leading the way in immunology research overseas. He was awarded the 2006 NHMRC Menzies Fellowship, which allowed him to work at internationally-renowned labs through the University of Washington in Seattle, where he continued his groundbreaking research into controlling immune activation. He now runs his own lab in Belgium, where he works on solutions for patients with rare immune disorders that pharmaceutical companies don’t investigate. He simultaneously works on trying to understand why the regulatory cells actually work, and what’s different about these cells when they’re in different organs.
Since establishing his lab, Prof Liston and his team have made regular noteworthy findings, including one that links mental health with the immune system. He was able to ‘seize the moment’ and test a hypothesis from a ‘natural experiment’ during an outbreak of gastro that occurred when the water system was accidentally contaminated in two small towns outside Antwerp.
“The hypothesis linking mental health with the immune system had been tested successfully on mice,” Prof Liston explains. “But it hadn’t been tested on humans. It’s only because we were able to take advantage of this experiment of nature—the synchronised infections— that we were able to test the hypothesis.
"Our testing showed that individuals who had high levels of depression at the time of the infection had a different immune response to those who didn’t. The results showed that the depression-immunity link wasn’t something in the mind, it is due to actual changes in the blood that gives depressed or anxious people a different immune system response.
"Even years later, among people whose mental health had improved since that original time of infection, they still had ongoing complications because they got hit with an infection at a point where they had a lot of depression or anxiety.”
Liston lab Golden Pipette won by Dr Carly Whyte
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 3:39PM 
Congratulations to Dr Carly Whyte, for winning the Golden Pipette!
Carly won the Golden Pipette for her mind-boggling data on how the cellular source of IL-2 profoundly alters the impact of this key cytokine on the cells around it. Data to be published, as soon as we understand it!
Carly will be moving over to the Babraham in January. Will the Golden Pipette be won back by team Leuven in time? Or will Cambridge take ownership of this proud trophy?
Golden Pipette, immunology Our immune systems are incredibly diverse. How much of that diversity is due to our genes?
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 2:38PM Each of our immune systems acts a little bit differently. Environmental factors have an impact, but so do our genes. A team of researchers in Leuven went looking for links between more than 10 million genetic variations and more than 50 immunological traits. Their findings help to explain why some people have a higher risk for immune diseases than others.
Our immune systems are molded by our unique genetic make-up. Add to that a complex mix of environmental drivers, and you get an enormous functional diversity. From an evolutionary point of view, this diversity is essential to minimize the chance that a pathogen could wipe out an entire population.
But the flip-side is that we’re also greatly diverse when it comes to susceptibility or resistance to a broad range of diseases – not only those with an obvious immunological component, such as autoimmunity, allergy, inflammation and cancer, but also those with a more indirect link to immune-deregulation, such as cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases.
A genome-wide survey
While scientists have studied the links between genetic variations and a whole range of different diseases, the characterization of this “genotype-phenotype relationship” for the immune system itself has received far less attention.
That is why a team of scientists led by An Goris (KU Leuven) and Adrian Liston (VIB-KU Leuven) undertook a large genetic study with almost 500 participants. In a so-called genome-wide association study, or GWAS, they probed more than 10 million genetic variations, spread out across the genome, for links to 54 different traits relevant to adaptive immunity. This allowed the researchers to determine which genetic variants were, for example, typical for people with high or low levels of different pro- or anti-inflammatory cytokines.
“We found eight previously unknown associations,” says An Goris, lead geneticist of the study. “The strongest connection was for a genetic variant present in only 2% of the study participants.” All of the identified genetic associations provide important biological insights into what drives variation in our immune systems.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, according to Goris: “What we know now, explains about 10% of the variation, but we are still in the initial discovery phase. There might be many more genetic variants—including relatively rare ones—that affect our immune response and thus our susceptibility to certain diseases.”
Helping to map disease risk and refine treatment
Mapping how genetic variants affect immune function will not only help us understand disease mechanism better, it should also help to refine treatment options.
“The clearest example is the clinical implication offered by genetic variation in the RICTOR gene,” explains Adrian Liston, lead immunologist on the study. “We now know that RICTOR changes the production of a cytokine called IL-4, providing a new therapeutic target for treatment of autoimmune diseases and asthma.”
In many cases, the effects are more subtle and indirect, adds Liston: “Most people will carry dozens of genetic variants that may skew the immune system in a particular direction. This accounts for part of the reason why different people have different risks for immune diseases, but we are much more than the sum of our genes.”
—
Lagou et al. 2018 Cell Reports. 'Genetic architecture of adaptive immune system identifies key immune regulators'.
Liston lab, genetics, immunology New position at the Babraham Institute
Tuesday, August 21, 2018 at 11:35AM I am pleased to annouce that in 2019 I will be taking up a new position as Senior Group Leader at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. I have been at the VIB and University of Leuven for nearly 10 years, and it is time for a new chapter.
In 2009, me and James Dooley set up the Translational Immunology laboratory in Leuven. We walked into an empty room. No chair, no tables, no staff, no equiptment. I was 28 years old, barely out of a post-doc and completely unprepared for what was to come. Over the next 10 years we turned the laboratory into a thriving hub for immunology research in Leuven. We now run three research teams, headed by James Dooley, Susan Schlenner and Stephanie Humblet-Baron, and we set up and run two Core Facilities, for flow cytometry and genome engineering. My lab currently hosts 25 researchers and has trained another 100 immunologists over the years, who now have positions across Belgium and the world. We have brought more than €10 million into the university in research grants, including the prestigious ERC Start and ERC Consolidator awards. We have published more than 120 research papers over the past 10 years, including major studies in Nature Immunology, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics and Science Translational Immunology. We have worked closely with the clinic here in Leuven, discovery new diseases and creating new therapeutic strategies for children with rare immune diseases.
These successes are due to the work of the amazing scientists in the lab, in particular James, Susan, Stephanie and Pier-Andree. But we could not have had this success without institutional support. The VIB recruited me with the incredibly successful independent researcher program, which provided a high level of core funding and complete intellectual independence. The VIB also provided an environment rich in new technologies and a highly international culture of excellence. In particular I want to thank Jo Bury for starting the independent researcher program, and Bart De Strooper and Patrik Verstreken for creating a VIB department where the values of intellectual independence thrive.
Patrik Verstreken, Director of VIB Center for Brain & Disease: "Adrian’s work has been nothing short of stellar, but what I appreciated the most is that he pushed us to think outside the box, that he brought amazing new technology to KU Leuven and VIB and that he drove the development of both the FACS core and Mutamouse. Adrian has also always been a fierce advocate of equal opportunities for all, and for a more equal gender balance in research; I am sure he’ll continue this in the future. Adiran is a role model for everybody in our center and he shows how hard work, inspiration and clever use of the many possibilities in our environment can propel you to the next stage in your career."
We were jointly hosted by the University of Leuven. Here we were incredibly lucky to enter the university in an era where university management was actively seeking to remake this ancient institution into a modern, international hub of research excellence. In particular, Peter Marynen and Wim Robberecht in Biomedical Sciences, and Marc Van Ranst, in the department of immunology, never failed to turn a crisis into an opportunity. Each of these leaders was able to see both the barriers that faced foreign group leaders and also the opportunities that they presented, and under their tenure the university and department made enormous progress. Without their support I would never have been able to build up two core facilities, opening up new research tools to the entire community. I sincerely hope that the next generation of leadership continues this outwards facing ethos.
Marc Van Ranst, Director of the KUL Department of Microbiology and Immunology: "Adrian is a top immunologist and a very appreciated member of our department and our departmental board. He is a smart innovator and scientific leader, and an all-round good guy. He is the driving force behind several core facilities such as Mutamouse and the FACS core. He will join the prestigious Babraham Institute at Cambridge where he will be a Group Leader in their Lymphocyte Signalling & Development cluster. Adrian will be the KU Leuven ambassador in Cambridge, and will remain involved in the activities of the Laboratory of Adaptive Immunity here in Leuven, exchanging students between Cambridge and our department. We wish him all possible success in this new phase in his career!"
The Translational Immunology laboratory in Leuven will not be closing down. Susan Schlenner is going to replace me as head of the laboratory, which will be renamed the Laboratory of Adaptive Immunity, and the laboratory will keep up two research teams (molecular Tregs, under Susan Schlenner, and clinical immunology, under Stephanie Humblet-Baron) and will continue to run both the FACS Core and MutaMouse. The tissue and disease team led by James Dooley will move with me to Cambridge, where our new adventure begins. This time, however, rather than landing in an empty room we will be embedded into the outstanding research environment of the Babraham Institute! A small team is coming with us, Oliver Burton and Carly Whyte, but new recruits are needed!
Liston lab