Members of the PhasAGE project recently attended the “The Leuven Protein Aggregation Meeting” which was organized by Frederic Rousseau and Joost Schymkowitz from the Switch Lab at VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research. The event was held in Leuven’s “Groot Begijnhof”, a unique and very special place designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. During nearly two intensive days, a fantastic lineup of speakers discussed recent advances and major challenges in the field of protein aggregation.
Among the invited speakers was Salvador Ventura of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), who presented a talk about the “Cryo-EM Structure of a Mammalian-specific Alternative Amyloid Exon”.
Two other members of Salvador Ventura’s Lab were selected for poster presentations:
– Jaime Santos, a postdoctoral researcher, presented a poster titled “α-helical peptidic scaffolds to target α-synuclein toxic species with nanomolar affinity”
– Irantzu Pallarès, a senior postdoctoral researcher and associate professor at UAB, presented findings on “Towards the development of a second-generation transthyretin kinetic stabilizer”
Oleg Chertkov, a postdoctoral researcher from Sandra Ribeiro’s Lab was awarded a PhasAGE Conference Fellowship to present his work on the “Role of PNKP in LLPS formation and aggregation of Ataxin 3”.
“The Leuven Protein Aggregation Meeting united a world leading researchers in the fields of protein self-assembly, misfolding protein, amyloid formation and structural biology. A wide range of topics was presented: structure and function of amyloidogenic proteins, the mechanism of the formation of amyloid structures, the molecular basis of toxicity of amyloids, anti-amyloid compounds as antimicrobial agents and biophysical methods to investigate amyloid. Particularly interesting topics are an interplay between phase separation and amyloid aggregation and new biophysical approaches to study phase separation (AFM-IR and FIDAbio). It was a great opportunity to established connect with a vibrant community of researchers working in the protein aggregation field and presented and discussed my results. Thank you for funding my travel and participation in this outstanding event!” says Oleg Chertkov.
And it was a very rewarding and fantastic discussion time aided with typical Belgian beers and tapas snacks!
Thank you to the organizers for such an amazing meeting. More information about the event can be found here.