Awardees 2019


The 2019 awards went to Lonneke A. van Vught, Jakko van Ingen and Laurent Dortet for their outstanding scientific achievements.

 

Lonneke A. van Vught, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Lonneke van Vught studied medicine at the University of Groningen, Netherlands where she developed a keen interest in infectious disease. In 2010, she moved to Curacao, Mexico where she studied vertical HIV transmission in the Caribbean. Concurrently, she started her PhD project at the Center of Experimental and Molecular Medicine (Amsterdam UMC), aiming to increase knowledge on epidemiology, outcome and host response in sepsis patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).

Lonneke was a central member of a research team that founded and executed a large prospective observational cohort study in the mixed ICUs of 2 Dutch tertiary teaching hospitals between 2011 and 2014. In this exceptional cohort, 8331 patient admissions were analysed for different circulating proteins, clinical parameters and microbiological information in order to understand the pathogenesis of sepsis and classification of patients in a way that would inform therapeutic decision makers. Lonneke has authored over 50 published papers on sepsis in the ICU. Post-PhD, she began clinical training to become a general practitioner, combining her work as a physician with her interest in research in the field of infectious disease.

Lonneke will receive her award at ECCMID 2019 in Amsterdam during the ESCMID Young Investigator Awards session on Saturday 13 April 2019 and she will give a presentation entitled “Sepsis in the intensive care unit, epidemiology outcome and host response”.

Jakko van Ingen, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Jakko van Ingen is a consultant clinical microbiologist and head of the mycobacteriology reference laboratory at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His interest in medicine and communicable diseases was sparked during a severe polio outbreak in his native village, among unvaccinated orthodox Christians. He joined the Medical School at Radboud University in Nijmegen, where he developed an interest in tuberculosis and did his final internships in Rubya, Tanzania. He continued his specialist training and PhD track at Radboud University in Nijmegen as well as at National Jewish Health, Denver, Colorado, USA.

He has authored over 160 papers on mycobacterial disease in peer-reviewed scientific journals. His advice on diagnosis and treatment of non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease is sought worldwide. His research group focuses on the pharmacodynamics of antimycobacterial drugs and development of new treatment regimens for non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease in preclinical models and clinical trials. His goal in life is to make non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease a treatable condition in all patients, regardless of who and where they are.

Jakko will receive his award at ECCMID 2019 in Amsterdam during the ESCMID Young Investigator Awards session on Saturday 13 April 2019 and he will give a talk entitled  “Kill 'em all! The quest for an antibiotic regimen that cures non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease”.

Laurent Dortet, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, Paris, France

Laurent Dortet has specialized in clinical microbiology and has been focusing on pharmaceutical studies. He pursued his PhD at the Pasteur Institute (Paris) in the unit of Prof. Cossart, working on L. monocytogenes virulence factors that help bacteria avoid autophagy. In 2010, he was recruited as an assistant professor in the microbiology laboratory of the Bicêtre tertiary teaching hospital, directed by Prof. Nordmann. He started to work on emerging antimicrobial resistances and developed and patented biochemical tests for the rapid detection of carbapenemases and ESBL.

In 2013, he became associate professor and director of the Associate National Reference Centre (NRC) for Antimicrobial Resistance dedicated to carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae. During his Marie Curie fellowship at the Imperial College, he described the role of the type III secretion system of P. aeruginosa to work as a pore-forming toxin to manipulate host epigenome. He also developed and patented a novel rapid diagnostic tool for the detection of polymyxin resistance using MALDI-TOF. Laurent has authored over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals (including 4 book chapters) on antimicrobial resistance.

Laurent will receive his award at ECCMID 2019 in Amsterdam during the ESCMID Young Investigator Awards session on Saturday 13 April 2019 and he will give a talk entitled  “Five-year revolution in the rapid detection of resistance to last resort antimicrobials”.