Prof. Sophie Layé
French National Institute for Agricultural Research, INRA
Laboratoire Nutrition et Neurobiologie Intégrée (NutriNeuro)
France

Sophie Layé is the head of the NutriNeuro Institute (INRA Univ Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP) that she created in 2011. The research conducted in the Institute aims to decipher the effect of nutrition on cognitive decline and mood disorders to define a protective nutrition for the brain. She also co-heads OptiNutriBrain, an international associated laboratory, with Pr F Calon (Université Laval, Québec). Since 2018, she leads Food4BrainHealth, an international research network (Inra, CNRS, Univ Bordeaux, Univ Bourgogne, Univ Saclay, Univ Toronto, McGill, Univ Laval). Sophie is recognized for her work on the contribution of unbalanced nutrition in mood and cognitive disorders and how lipids (omega3, omega6, etc.) participate to neuroplasticity and neuroinflammation.

Prof. Layé full CV

Dr. Vincenzo Di Marzo
Chairholder and Professor
Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences
Faculty of Medicine
Université Laval
Canada

Dr. Vincenzo Di Marzo holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair on the Microbiome-Endocannabinoidome Axis in Metabolic Health (CERC-MEND) at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada and Associate Research Director at the Institute of Biomolecular Chemistry of the National Research Council (ICB-CNR) in Naples, Italy. He is also the coordinator of the Endocannabinoid Research Group in the Naples region, and the director of the Joint International Research Unit between the Italian National Research Council and Université Laval, for Chemical and Biomolecular Research on the Microbiome and its impact on Metabolic Health and Nutrition (UMI-MicroMeNu). He holds a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Naples “Federico II” in 1983, and a PhD in biochemistry from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London in 1988. He is co-author of over 760 articles published in peer-reviewed journals (H index 131 according to Scopus). In 2014-2021 he has been listed for 8 consecutive years among the Highly Cited Researchers (top 1% in the world) in all scientific disciplines.

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Dr. Javier Delgado-Lista
Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Nursing | University of Cordoba
Reina Sofía University Hospital of Córdoba
Spain

Dr. Delgado Lista is Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Nursing of the University of Cordoba, where he also serves as Vice Dean of Hospital Affairs. He has a position linked as Medical Staff in the Internal Medicine Unit, in the Reina Sofía University Hospital of Córdoba, and is Co-Principal Investigator of the GC-09 group of the Maimonides Institute of Biomedical Research. He is a member of the CIBER of Obesity and Nutrition, and of the Research Group "Gene-Environment Interaction" (Code Group CTS525) of the Andalusian Plan for Research, Development and Innovation. With regard to his membership in management and evaluation structures, he is a Member of the Innovation Commission of IMIBIC, of the Information Systems Commission of the Reina Sofía University Hospital of Córdoba, of the Selection and Evaluation Board of the "María Castellano Arroyo" Program of the Junta de Andalucía, of the Executive Board of the Spanish Society of Arteriosclerosis and of the Diabetes Working Group, Obesity and Nutrition of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine.

Regarding his indicators of scientific production, he has participated in more than 30 Phase II-IV Clinical Trials, being Principal Investigator in 11 of them. He was founder and head of a technological Spin-Off company (Padmedicine S.L.) during the triennium 2012-2015, he is  Main Author of 6 Patents, has more than 170 publications indexed in ISI-JCR, with 3 of them "Highly Cited in Field" and 2 with more than 200 citations. Its H index is 37, he has more than 20 Citations/Article and he has been cited more than 4500 times. He has been Principal Investigator of several Research Projects, national and international. Finally, he has recently received the Mention of Excellence in Teaching of the University of Córdoba 2022.

The main lines of Dr. Delgado Lista's research are the study of the influence of diet on chronic diseases (with special attention to cardiovascular diseases, obesity and Diabetes Mellitus) and the development of technological innovation projects in medicine (ehealth).

Dr. Isabelle Marc
Full Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Faculty of Medicine
Université Laval
Canada

Dr. Isabelle Marc is a clinician researcher at the Research Centre of the CHU de Québec, and an associate professor at the Department of Pediatrics at Laval University. She has built her research environment around her clinical practice as a pediatrician. Dr. Marc works on the effects of maternal life habits (exercise, sleep, breastfeeding) on child growth and development. Several of her studies have been realised with her students in cohorts in which she is involved. She developed an exercise laboratory for pregnant women and children at the Research Centre, which allows her to collect objective measurements of this population’s physical condition.

Dr. Marc is interested in the effects of omega-3 on the neonatal morbidity of extremely premature infants (less than 28 weeks of gestation). A supplementation with omega-3 administered to the lactating mother is an effective way to provide a daily dose of omega-3 to the preterm child through breast milk. She now wants to demonstrate the positive effects of this intervention on the infant’s health, growth, and development.

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Prof. Valerie O’Donnell
School of Medicine
Cardiff University
Wales

Since 2007, Professor O’Donnell’s group has discovered large numbers of lipids made by human platelets, neutrophils and monocytes, via the lipoxygenase and cyclooxygenase pathways. They have shown that these lipids can innate immunity including promoting blood clotting, immune signaling and antibacterial activities of leukocytes. They belong to families of enzymatically oxidized phospholipids (eoxPL), and their elevated generation is found in human thrombotic disease, while their deficiency leads to bleeding defects and protection against vascular inflammation. This work is done in collaboration with Prof Peter Collins and Dr Vince Jenkins (UHW). On arriving in Cardiff, O’Donnell defined with her colleagues how lipid oxidation mediated by vascular enzymes can control blood pressure both in vitro and in vivo. Main findings include showing how cellular lipoxygenases and cyclooxygenases catalytically consume nitric oxide resulting in vasoconstriction and how neutrophils patrol the vasculature maintaining blood pressure through dampening bacterial-induced inflammation. While based at University of Alabama at Birmingham, O’Donnell worked with the Freeman lab to characterize how nitric oxide and lipid oxidation pathways intersect (published in JBC, Biochemistry), defining new biochemical routes to nitrolipid synthesis, and showing these lipids have potent anti-inflammatory actions. These studies contributed to a patent which is licenced to Complexa Inc and the lipids are now in Phase II trials for vascular inflammation. O’Donnell studied at University of Berne, Switzerland on a Marie Curie Fellowship (1994-1996) and earned her PhD at University of Bristol (1990-1993).

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Prof. Ru-Rong Ji
Distinguished Professor of Anesthesiology, School of Medicine
Professor in Anesthesiology | Professor in Neurobiology | Professor in Cell Biology
Duke University
United States of America

Chronic pain is a major health problem in the US, affecting 100 million Americans. The long-term goal of the lab is to identify molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the genesis of chronic pain and, furthermore, to develop novel pain therapeutics that can target these mechanisms. We are interested in the following questions. (1) How do neuroinflammation and activation of glial cells (microglia and astrocytes) regulate pain and spinal cord synaptic plasticity via neuro-glial and neuro-immune interactions? (2) How do secreted miRNAs regulate neuronal signaling and synaptic transmission and pain as novel neuromodulators and pain mediators? (3) How do pro-resolution lipid mediators such as resolvins and protectin control pain via GPCR and arrestin signaling? (4) Do pain and itch share similar mechanisms? (5) How does Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling in primary sensory neurons regulate pain and itch? (6) How can bone marrow stem cells produce long-term pain relief via secreting anti-inflammatory and trophic factors? We employ a multidisciplinary approach that covers in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo electrophysiology, neuronal and glial cell biology, transgenic mice, and behaviors.

Professor Ji’s full CV