Chair: Koen Venema

Co-chair: George Paraskevakos

Prolongation of lifespan is one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine. Microbiota is an important regulator of health and lifespan and its malleable nature presents hidden opportunities.

As interest grows in maintaining human health during spaceflight, probiotics are increasingly being considered as a possible microbiome-based countermeasure. This presentation reviews the scientific rationale behind that idea and highlights the major scientific and translational questions that remain open.

Chair: Koen Venema

More speakers to be confirmed 

In vitro and in vivo investigations reveal for the first time the ability of Propionibacterium freudenreichii, a beneficial bacterium known as a dairy starter and as a probiotic, to prevent the onset of food allergy.

Probiotics are emerging as complementary tools for oral health by modulating the oral microbiome, reducing inflammation, and inhibiting pathogenic mechanisms in gingivitis and periodontitis, with expanding applications in caries, halitosis, peri-implant disease, and future personalized preventive care.

Rewiring the altered microbial metabolism to alleviate MASLD: we developed an engineered microbial biotherapeutic that restores metabolic homeostasis by modulating bile acid and aromatic amino acid pathways, providing a precise and programmable alternative to conventional microbiome-targeted interventions.

Speaker: Vera Neuz Bunesova

Chair: Koen Venema

Speakers to be confirmed

Speaker: Kana Yahagi

A synbiotic containing B. breve MCC1274 and lactulose increased fecal CLA isomers in adults, in parallel with higher B. breve abundance. The same isomers were detected in B. breve MCC1274 supernatants, and were reduced in the bbi mutant.

Bioactive compounds and whole foods are promising strategies to address gut microbiota dysbiosis linked to obesity. Berberine and coenzyme Q10 support metabolic health and antioxidant activity, while fiber-rich beet pulp enhances gut health through its prebiotic effects.

Speaker: Dr Yvonne Dommels

Chair: Koen Venema

More speakers to be confirmed

Bacterial EVs have been linked to cell-to-cell communication. The biogenesis of EVs is partially influenced by prophage induction. These particles carry DNA and RNA, including CRISPR, and in animal models, they can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and reduce neuroinflammation

This study explores Bacillus subtilis BSCU1 extracellular vesicles (EVS) as innovative postbiotics, demonstrating their ability to enhance respiratory innate immunity through epithelial barrier reinforcement and neutrophil activation. The EVs scalable industrial production process is also adressed.

Chair: Koen Venema

More speakers to be confirmed 

Ventos is a first-of-its-kind wearable that continuously measures intestinal gas in free-living humans.

Advances in ingestible technology enable easy, minimally-invasive, and repeatable access to otherwise inaccessible gut regions. We developed GISMO, the first ingestible sensor to measure in vivo gut redox balance, pH, and temperature, and a sensor-based sampling pill for microbiome profiling.

Speaker: Hanan Mohammed

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to increased risk of chronic diseases but their effects on oral and gut microbiome communities remain understudied. Herein we study how ultra-processed food intake correlate with oro-gut microbiomes and metabolic health in young adults.

The main hindrance to clinical translatability of in vitro cultivation systems is inoculum drift during the culture period. We present the first standardized framework to assess inoculum fidelity and show such systems can be optimised to fit the proposed framework

We are developing Poland's first gut microbiome health index by combining a population-calibrated, function-based scoring algorithm with a strain-level metagenomic pipeline, to characterise the Polish microbiome and identify locally prevalent strains as targets for Polish-specific probiotics.