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 

Lieselotte.vanbockstal@uantwerpen.be 

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.