A guest blog post by Florent Morfoisse, Ph.D., 2018 GRC Travel Award Winner
My name is Florent Morfoisse. I am a currently a postdoc at the GIGA Center, University of Liege, Belgium, under the supervision of Pr Agnes Noel. I received a Travel Award from LE&RN to attend the 20th International Vascular Biology Meeting (IVBM) in Helsinki, Finland.
Experience at IVBM
Going to such a great meeting was an opportunity for me be updated on the hot topics in the field, as well as discuss my work with the Who’s Who in lymphangiogenesis during the poster session. It is crucial for a young scientist to attend at least once a year this kind of terrific conference to stay at the cutting edge of the field. I also had the opportunity to meet Mr. Repicci, who made a truly inspiriting speech about lymphedema, emphasizing the necessity to spread awareness and strengthen research against this pathology.
Current Research and Goals
Since earning my Ph.D., I have focused my work on lymphatic system development, organization, and functionality in pathologies. I started to work on tumoral lymphangiogenesis during my Ph.D. and now I switched to the field of secondary lymphedema.
I will finish my postdoc in Pr Noel’s lab and keep increasing my knowledge and skills range to eventually go back in France and become a junior group leader to strengthen the research in this still poorly known field. I hope that my research will contribute to bring new insights into lymphatic biology and shed light on the implication of lymphatic vessels in human pathologies.
One of the most important issues for lymphatic biology is that this field has been neglected for a long time. During the last decades we are fixing this mistake and are beginning to realize the whole potential of the lymphatics. The discovery of lymphatics in the brain, for example, will undoubtedly lead to lymphatic-based new therapies for pathologies like Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases. New insights into the biology of intestinal lymphatic vessels had also been discovered recently, thus strengthening the link between lymphatics and the growing field of microbiota.
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