BSP/BSPP/NVP Spring Meeting, Manchester, UK, 15-17 April 2019
Lieselotte Van Bockstal
Laboratory of Microbiology, Parasitology and Hygiene (LMPH),
University of Antwerp, Belgium
The BSP spring meeting is an annual convention held by the British Society for Parasitology. This year the BSP organized for the first time a joint meeting with the Belgian Society for Parasitology and Protistology (BSPP) and the Dutch Society for Parasitology (NVP) that took place in Manchester. The scientific 3-day program included oral and poster presentations covering topics related to host pathogen interactions, cell biology, ecology and ecosystems and human interventions.
I was selected to present my poster entitled “Impaired development of miltefosine-resistant Leishmania infantum in the sand fly vectors Phlebotomus perniciosus and Lutzomyia longipalpis” in a pitch format during the cell biology session on the first day of the congress. We had three minutes to convince the audience to have a look at our poster. It was a great success, because after the poster pitches I received a lot of positive reactions about my results and had some interesting talks with fellow scientists. This work has now been submitted for publication.
After my poster pitch presentation, I could enjoy the rest of the meeting in a more relaxed state. I attended the very interesting talk of Paul Kaye regarding the interaction of Leishmania parasites with Kupffer cells, which is a main topic in my PhD work. This conference was also a good opportunity for networking. We joined the conference dinner and participated to after-conference events (we finished second in the parasitology quiz!). Overall, it was a great experience to go with our whole “leishmaniac-team” to the Manchester Spring meeting. I am thankful for this international opportunity that Zoetis and BSPP gave me and I would like to encourage other PhD students to apply for this travel grant.