The Top Sector Life Sciences & Health (LSH) sees a possibility to allocate extra ‘Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Allowance’ budget to the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH) for a small project within the NCOH-LSH One Health call 2019. This call involves strategic partnerships under the Knowledge and Innovation Agenda of Top Sector Life Sciences & Health (LSH).

In 2019 worldwide 1 in 4 deaths is due to an infectious disease. In addition to the big 3 – HIV, malaria and tuberculosis – this mainly concerns respiratory infections, infectious diarrhea and sepsis. In the Netherlands, too, the burden of disease due to infections remains high.

PhD student Doris van Bergeijk brought 40,000-year-old bacteria from mammoth poop back to life. She hopes to find new information that can help research at the Institute of Biology Leiden into antibiotics and antibiotics resistance.

One Health PACT has a 4 year (maybe 5 year) postdoc position available @ Deltares/CML focusing on landscape scenario modelling for vector borne diseases.

An enormous library of products derived from more than ten thousand fungi could help us find new drugs. Researchers from the group of Jeroen den Hertog at the Hubrecht Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the Westerdijk Institute and Utrecht University, have set up this library and screened it for biologically active compounds. They have already found various known compounds, among which the cholesterol lowering drug lovastatin. The library of fungal products offers ample opportunity to search for new drugs. The results of this research were published on the 26th of November in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.

Interest in the One Health PACT (Predicting Arbovirus Climate Tipping points) was great with 680 unique applications. This means, the selection process has been a bit delayed.

NOW RECRUITING – New PhD programme run jointly at the University of Edinburgh and Leiden University Medical Centre on Integrated One Health Solutions. Deadline for applications 28 November 2019.

Preceding the NCOH Science Café in Utrecht, Young NOCH hosted a masterclass by Kick Moors titled: ‘To be a Scientist, and how to pitch it’. Here, twenty young researchers became increasingly aware of their motivation to be a scientist, and how to translate this into the ‘perfect pitch’.

Coming five years, a large consortium of several NCOH Partners (coordinator Erasmus MC ), will investigate how the Netherlands can be better prepared for infectious diseases transmitted by mosquitoes. The multidisciplinary character of the collaboration, in which citizen science also plays a role, is unique.

The program makers of ‘De Kennis van Nu’ prepared a broadcast around mosquito research in The Netherlands. Recordings were made at the location and with researchers of several of our NCOH partners; Erasmus MC, Leiden University, RIVM and Wageningen University & Research.