Award granted by the research board 2017 - Vandendriessche award : Medical and biomedical sciences

Sarah Hendrickx graduated with great distinction in 2010 in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Antwerp. Under the supervision of prof. Louis Maes at the Laboratory for Microbiology, Parasitology and Hygiene (LMPH), she performed her master thesis entitled 'Use of Leishmania reporter strains for in vitro and in vivo evaluation of antileishmanial drugs'. This way, she became actively involved in the ongoing research on the Leishmania parasite and encouraged her to pursue her research ambitions as a PhD student on an ongoing project at LMPH. After one year, she applied for and obtained the position of mandate assistant. Sarah became responsible for teaching several practical courses, such as 'Parasitology' (Biomedical Sciences and Veterinary Sciences); 'Immunochemistry and Cell Culture' (Biomedical Sciences) and 'Microbiology' (Veterinary Sciences). Despite these ample teaching activities and two maternity leaves, she finalized her PhD thesis, entitled "Emergence of drug resistance in visceral leishmaniasis treatment - Will paromomycin and miltefosine stand the test of time?" in December 2015.Her thesis focused on the emergence of resistance of the Leishmania parasite against all currently used antileishmanial drugs, highlighting the need to combat future emergence of resistance against the few remaining effective antileishmanials. She successfully applied for a FWO-postdoc position and a FWO-Krediet aan Navorsers to continue the work in visceral leishmaniasis in addition of establishing her own independent research line within LMPH with focus on the cutaneous variant of the disease that has not yet been covered at LMPH up until now. In order to obtain sufficient funding for this, she applied for an additional FWO-Krediet aan Navorsers earlier this year.Note: All the chapters of her PhD have been published in high impact international journals

Keywords:PHENOTYPE, DRUG RESISTANCE, SELECTION PROCEDURES, PARASITE

Disciplines:Microbiology, Veterinary medicine