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One of the major concerns with the disease caused by Covid-19 is its severe course, which causes many problems that can lead to hospital overload. Early detection of whether or not a person is at risk of developing a severe form of the disease is therefore crucial to optimise patient care and hospital resource management. This is one of the objectives of the study carried out by QUALIblood, a UNamur spin-off, in collaboration with the Department of Pharmacy and many other industrial and hospital partners. Exploration of a cutting-edge technology at the service of health.

As the largest and heaviest organ in the human body, the skin is the focus of Professor Yves Poumay's research. For nearly 30 years, within the Cells and Tissues laboratory (LabCeTi), he has been developing in vitro epidermal models that reproduce skin pathologies to better understand and treat them. A pioneering approach that offers alternatives to animal experimentation! On the eve of an international congress devoted to dermatology research organised at UNamur (see below), he talks about the importance of melanoma screening and details the latest advances in dermatology made in his laboratory.

Since 1996, the European Radiation Research Society (ERRS) has awarded the Bacq and Alexander Prize each year to an outstanding European researcher in recognition of the recipient's achievements in the field of radiation research. This year, the award was presented to Professor Carine Michiels, from the University of Namur.

The lysosome, a small intracellular organelle, is often represented as the stomach of the cell due to its acidity and the presence of numerous digestive enzymes within it. Its role? The degradation of numerous molecules and their recycling to build new molecules and fuel energy production in the cells. Since 2003, Marielle Boonen has been particularly interested in the lysosome. Together with researchers from UNamur, she has highlighted the role of a lysosomal enzyme called HYAL1 in the bone remodelling process.

In the summer of 2022, we set out to discover the qualified researchers at UNamur who were awarded funding by the FNRS in 2022. Today, we meet Alison Forrester, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut Curie (Paris), who will soon be joining UNamur for her new term as an FNRS qualified researcher at the NARILIS Institute. Her research focuses on studying compounds that could modify the efficiency of the protein production process and thus open up new therapeutic approaches.

On 15 March 2023, Prof. Henri-François Renard and Prof. Alison Forrester introduced the new advanced bioimaging tools of the UNamur Morphology & Imaging technology platform available to a broad audience of users.

On 13 December 2023, Charlotte Beaudart, a new academic at the University of Namur Faculty of Medicine, will be awarded a prize at the annual ceremony for Belgian scientific research in support of her innovative research on the subject of ageing.

In 1996, the European Union created the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), a set of prestigious and competitive grants designed to fund research. Thanks to her, the PROSTAMET project got underway on January 1, an ambitious program focused on training PhD students and discovering new therapeutic avenues against prostate cancer, in which UNamur is participating.

At UNamur's NARILIS Institute, the 'Stress and AGEing' (SAGE) research group, led by Professor Florence Chainiaux, is seeking to understand the biological processes involved in ageing, focusing on the interconnection between exposure to stress and cellular senescence.

Catherine Michaux, a qualified FNRS researcher, is a partner in the European MSCA-Doctoral Network PROSTAMET project. The special feature of this project is that it funds both research and the training of 9 doctoral students within a network of multidisciplinary experts.

A multidisciplinary research team from the University of Namur (UNamur) and the UCL Namur University Hospital (Godinne campus) has just published a study in the journal Acta Neuropathologica that sheds light on some of the mysteries surrounding the origin of the pain experienced by patients with long COVID. Their findings suggest that these painful symptoms may be mediated by an autoimmune response. In other words: patients produce antibodies that attack their own neurons—those responsible for pain perception and deep body sensation, located along the spine. These highly promising results represent a major scientific breakthrough that opens new avenues for better understanding the disease and, ultimately, developing a treatment targeting the painful symptoms of long COVID.

The TineaDiag project is a research project run by UNamur and ULiège with funding from the SPW Research Win²WAL program. It tackles dermatophytoses, skin infections responsible for ringworm, which can affect both humans and animals. The aim? To identify, in dermatophytes, precise cellular markers in order to detect them with sensitivity and certainty, and thus identify infections caused by antifungal-resistant strains.