Microbiome Insights co-founder and co-CSO Brett Finlay will be one of the distinguished speakers heading to Paris from October 15th to 16th 2018 for the Institut Pasteur meeting: Modeling the Mammalian Microbiota Host Superorganism, Current Tools and Challenges.

Knowledge about the role of microbiota and microbial metabolites in host functions and health has steadily increased over the past two decades. With mechanistic insights enabled by animal models and an increasing ability to characterize microbial communities during both development and adulthood, researchers are on the cusp of real therapeutic treatments. The Institut Pasteur meeting will bring together academic and industry leaders from this field to share new visions on host-microbiota mutualisms and parasitism, and to discuss the latest techniques and models. Along with Dr. Finlay, some exciting names on the program include Dr. Andrew Macpherson of Inselspital in Bern, Switzerland, giving the keynote address, and Marion Leclerc from the MICALIS Institute in Jouy-En-Josas, France and Philippe Sansonetti of Institut Pasteur.

Finlay will present his talk, entitled The Role of the Early Life Microbiota in Malnutrition and Environmental Enteropathy during the ‘Models of Pathogenesis’ session on Monday, October 15th. He has published over 500 papers and, as a principal investigator at the University of British Columbia he studies how microbes interact with hosts to influence health and disease. His lab developed the first animal model for the study of environmental enteropathy, a key feature of childhood malnutrition. Ongoing work with this model is now funded by the Gates Foundation in order to explore how it can better our understanding of the consequences of malnutrition. The Finlay lab also investigates the risks for childhood asthma stemming from microbiota and metabolic alterations during infancy, and were the first lab to demonstrate that early life intestinal microbiota plays a crucial role in asthma susceptibility.

By understanding how microbes colonize the small intestine and cause stunted growth and inflammation, Finlay and his collaborators hope to develop new nutritional therapies for human malnutrition. His lab’s work is essential for understanding the microbiota-host superorganism and the associations that are essential to maintain good health and development—making Finlay a “can’t miss” speaker at this prestigious meeting.