Ellen Goeteyn
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Ellen Goeteyn Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology (LPM) |
Ellen Goeteyn graduated as Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Drug Development) at Ghent University in June 2019. She is working as a PhD student in the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology (LPM) since November 2019 (funded by a PhD fellowship by the Research Foundation-Flanders, FWO).
Her research focusses on the development of a novel anti-inflammatatory treatment for patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by exploiting beneficial bacteria of the lung microbiome.
Chronic lung inflammation is the main driver of pathogenesis in patients with CF and COPD. in CF patients, inflammation is due to chronic infections (mostly with Pseudomonas aeruginosa), whereas in COPD patients this is mainly triggered by tobacco smoke exposure. Currently, there is no safe and effective anti-inflammatory treatment for these patients. As a result of new culture-independent methods, it has become clear that there is a much greater bacterial diversity in the lungs of patients with CF and COPD than previously thought. While this presence is often regarded from a negative point of view, exploring the lung microbiome from a therapeutic perspective has highlighted the anti-inflammatory potential of the lung microbiome. The aim of this research is to develop a defined microbial consortium that is able to dampen the pro-inflammatory response of lung epithelial cells.
For her work Ellen uses a highly differentiated 3D lun tissue model to investigate the host response to the designed consortia. This model system reflects morphological and functional features of lung epithelium and thereby improves the translation of in vitro to in vivo results.