We are excessively grateful to the the International Society for Human & Animal Mycology for awarding many of our labmembers with the  ISHAM2018 Attendance Grant. This makes it possible for many of us to attend the 20th Congress of the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology (Amsterdam) and present our research there.

We organised our first Students’ Presentation Session (SPS) in February. Altogether 9 of our students (BSc and MSc) gave oral presentations on their research topics. These topics were very variable: implementations of the CRISPR-CAS9 system in C. parapsilosis, immune responses of human keratinocytes and oral epithelial cells against commensalist and pathogenic Candida species, virulence and stress tolerance of azole evolved C. parapsilosis strains,  immune recognition of C. parapsilosis, overexpression mutants in C. parapsilosis and zinc uptake in C. parapsilosis and its relation to virulence.

The SPS was an excellent opportunity for our students to prepare for their thesis defence as all presentations were thoroughly and constructively discussed by the other lab members.

Here are some shots of our students:)

Katica Kocsis

Emese Halmos and Máté Csikós:

Márton Horváth:

Zsolt Tasi:

Gergő Drabbant:

Évi Veres:

Flóra Bohner:

Tamás Takács:

Csabi’s article has been published online the International Journal of Nanomedicine. Here is is the link it is fresh and warm, go ahead and read it:https://www.dovepress.com/biosynthesized-silver-and-gold-nanoparticles-are-potent-antimycotics-a-peer-reviewed-article-IJN 

Congratulations!

As part of the refurbishment of the Department of Microbiology (University of Szeged), we got a unique opportunity  to move into a larger laboratory room. We have recently finished settling in. Now we have much more space to work and also newly installed shelves, wardrobes and drawers too.  We are thankful to all who have made this possible: the head of the department, our PI and other colleagues.

Here are some photos:

Renike’s,Csabi’s, Flóra’s, Tibi’s and Gergő’s article (title: Investigation of Candida parapsilosis virulence regulatory factors during host-pathogen interaction) has been published online by Scientific Reports. It is available here: https://wwwhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19453-4.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19453-4.

Congratulations!

The lists of weekly labmeetings and labmanagers for this semester are now available as a pdf document in DOWNLOADS page of this website.

Renike’s and Csabi’s article (title: Investigation of Candida parapsilosis virulence regulatory factors during host-pathogen interaction) has been accepted for publication by Scientific Reports. Csabi’s article (title: Biosynthesized silver and gold nanoparticles are potent antimycotics against opportunistic pathogenic yeasts and dermatophytes) has also been accepted for publication by the International Journal of Nanomedicine.  Congratulations both of you!

We have created a Facebook group, a Twitter account and an Instagram page for our upcoming CESC 2018 conference. Information regarding the conference will be posted on these surfaces.

The links are as follows:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/132764080770936/
https://twitter.com/CESC2018
https://www.instagram.com/cesc2018/

Here is Máté’s and Sára’s report:

We participated at the Final Scientific Conference of ImResFun on molecular mechanisms of fungal pathogen-host interactions. The conference took place at the beautiful Innsbruck, the capital city of Tyrol in western Austria.

The lectures focused on fungal infectious diseases caused by the most common human fungal pathogens, the opportunistic Candida species. The four day of the event, divided into four Symposiums which were the following: Clinical importance of fungal diseases; Host immunology of fungal disease; Fungal response / Evasion to host defense; From fungal biofilms to intestinal disorders. We listened really nice and useful presentations and we had the opportunity to meet and talk with the „top dogs” of the Candida researcher community from many parts of the world. Máté and me represented our projects in the poster section, while Attila was a chair man of the 3rd day and presented our lab’s research work and results.

Of course besides the lectures we had a chance to go out and take some adventures in the surroundings. We visited the Hafelekarspitze mountain (2,334 m) with cable car. We took a short walk on the top and the landscape was gorgeous, we even saw snow there. Another day we visited the city itself, and the 3rd day we had an extraordinary experience, namely we went to the olympic bobsleigh track to take a ride.

Our journey to Innsbruck was very exciting both in professional and in social way.

Two articles with Renike as co-author have been published in Microbiology Spectrum and Scientific Reports. Congratulations! Check out the links below:

http://www.asmscience.org/content/journal/microbiolspec/10.1128/microbiolspec.FUNK-0036-2016

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09408-6