Event Details

11th November 15:00-16:00
Onsite event
in Lauren 2, Medisiina D

Prof. Miguel Soares, Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine (GIMM), Portugal
“Host defence adaptations to infection”

Host: António Sousa (aggode@utu.fi)

Coffee and pulla served at 14:30, first come first serve!

Book a session with the guest: https://seafile.utu.fi/f/54c930db992d4b6c9e11

Miguel Soares is a PI at the Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine (GIMM) in Portugal, where he leads the Inflammation Laboratory (https://gimm.pt/lab/miguel-soares-lab), and an invited professor at the Lisbon Medical School, Universidade de Lisboa. He obtained his PhD from the University of Louvain in Belgium, did his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and set up his lab at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in 2004. His lab studies how organisms survive infection. Besides fighting microbes directly (resistance), hosts can also limit the damage an infection causes without reducing the pathogen load, a strategy known as disease tolerance. The lab investigates how stress responses and inter-organ communication rewire host metabolism to make this possible, mainly in malaria and sepsis. Its contributions include uncovering the protective roles of carbon monoxide and sickle haemoglobin in malaria, and showing that cross-regulation of iron and glucose metabolism establishes disease tolerance to sepsis. Most recently, the lab has shown that jaundice may be a shield rather than a symptom: bilirubin accumulation during malaria appears to be an adaptive response that helps kill the parasite and protect host tissues. This work is now funded by his second ERC Advanced Grant (KILLBILL), which will explore bilirubin as a weapon against the parasite, a shield for host tissues and a modulator of immune responses. It is also funded by the “la Caixa” Foundation to investigate whether bilirubin protects the kidneys of children with severe malaria and to identify early biomarkers of acute kidney injury.

Selected publications:

Pamplona A, Ferreira A, Balla J, Jeney V, Balla G, Epiphanio S, Chora A, Rodrigues CD, Gregoire IP, Cunha-Rodrigues M, Portugal S, Soares MP, Mota MM. Heme oxygenase-1 and carbon monoxide suppress the pathogenesis of experimental cerebral malaria. Nat Med. 2007 Jun;13(6):703-710.

Ferreira A, Marguti I, Bechmann I, Jeney V, Chora A, Palha NR, Rebelo S, Henri A, Beuzard Y, Soares MP. Sickle hemoglobin confers tolerance to Plasmodium infection. Cell. 2011 Apr 29;145(3):398-409.

Medzhitov R, Schneider DS, Soares MP. Disease tolerance as a defense strategy. Science. 2012 Feb 24;335(6071):936-941.

Weis S, Carlos AR, Moita MR, Singh S, Blankenhaus B, Cardoso S, Larsen R, Rebelo S, Schäuble S, Del Barrio L, Mithieux G, Rajas F, Lindig S, Bauer M, Soares MP. Metabolic adaptation establishes disease tolerance to sepsis. Cell. 2017 Jun 15;169(7):1263-1275.e14.

Figueiredo A, Rastogi ST, …, Portugal S, Kurth F, Elo LL, Paul BD, Martins R, Soares MP. A metabolite-based resistance mechanism against malaria. Science. 2025 Jun 12;388(6752):eadq6741.