The "Credits & Projects" call for proposals resulted in 12 grants being awarded for ambitious new projects. These include two "equipment" grants, eight "research credits (CDR)" grants, and two "research projects (PDR)" grants, one of which is in collaboration with the ULB. The FRIA call for doctoral research support will fund eleven doctoral scholarships and the FRESH call will fund three. 

Two prestigious Scientific Impulse Mandates (MIS) were also obtained. This three-year funding supports young permanent researchers who wish to develop an original and innovative research program by acquiring scientific autonomy within their department.  

We would also like to highlight the two projects funded under the "WelCHANGE" call, a funding instrument for research projects with potential societal impact, led by a principal investigator in the humanities and social sciences.

Call for Equipment  

• Xavier De Bolle, Narilis Institute, Co-promoter in collaboration with UCLouvain
• Luca Fusaro, NISM Institute 

Call for Research Grants (CDR) 

• Marc Hennequart, NARILIS Institute
• Nicolas Gillet, NARILIS Institute
• Jean-Yves Matroule, NARILIS Institute
• Patricia Renard, NARILIS Institute
• Francesco Renzi, NARILIS Institute
• Stéphane Vincent, NISM Institute
• Laurence Meurant, NaLTT Institute
• Emma-Louise Silva, NaLTT Institute  

Call for Research Projects (PDR) 

• Jérémy Dodeigne, Transitions Institute, Co-supervisor in collaboration with ULB
• Luc Henrard, NISM Institute; Co-supervisor: Yoann Olivier, NISM Institute 

Fund for Training in Research in Industry and Agriculture (FRIA)

• Emma Bongiovanni - Supervisor: Catherine Michaux, NISM Institute
• Simon Chabot - Supervisor: Carine Michiels, Narilis Institute; Co-supervisor: Anne-Catherine Heuskin, Narilis Institute
• Lee Denis - Supervisor: Muriel Lepère, ILEE Institute
• Maé Desclez - Supervisor: Johan Yans, ILEE Institute; Co-supervisor: Hamed Pourkhorsandi (University of Toulouse)
• Pierre Lombard - Supervisor: Benoît Muylkens, Narilis Institute; Co-supervisor: Damien Coupeau, Narilis Institute
• Amandine Pecquet - Supervisor: Nicolas Gillet, Narilis Institute; Co-supervisor: Damien Coupeau, Narilis Institute
• Kilian Petit - Supervisor: Henri-François Renard, Narilis Institute; Co-supervisor: Xavier De Bolle, Narilis Institute
• Simon Rouxhet - Supervisor: Catherine Michaux, NISM Institute; Co-supervisor: Nicolas Gillet, Narilis Institute
• William Soulié - Supervisor: Yoann Olivier, NISM Institute
• Elisabeth Wanlin - Supervisor: Xavier De Bolle, Narilis Institute
• Laura Willam - Supervisor: Frédérik De Laender, ILEE Institute 

Fund for Research in the Humanities (FRESH) 

• Louis Droussin - Supervisor: Arthur Borriello, Transitions Institute; Co-supervisor: Vincent Jacquet, Transitions Institute
• Nicolas Larrea Avila - Supervisor: Guilhem Cassan, DeFIPP Institute
• Victor Sluyters – Supervisor: Wafa Hammedi, NADI Institute
• Amandine Leboutte - Co-supervisor: Erika Wauthia (UMons); Co-supervisor: Cédric Vanhoolandt, IRDENa Institute.

Scientific Impulse Mandate (MIS) 

• Charlotte Beaudart, Narilis Institute
• Eli Thoré ILEE Institute 

WelCHANGE Call  

• Nathalie Burnay Transitions Institute, in collaboration with UCLouvain
• Catherine Guirkinger, DeFIPP Institute

Congratulations to all! 

Scientific discoveries are like great stories: they often begin with an encounter. Nearly 20 years ago, Professor Stéphane Vincent of UNamur's Laboratoire de Chimie Bio-Organique, then a young sugar chemist, was in search of something new. During a post-doctorate in Strasbourg, France, in the laboratory of Jean-Marie Lehn, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a specialist in supramolecular chemistry, he befriended another post-doctoral fellow: the Romanian Mihail Barboiu, now a CNRS researcher in Montpellier.

Soon before the Covid-19 pandemic, at a scientific congress, Mihail Barboiu showed Stéphane Vincent the results of his experiments. "He was using DCFs as a kind of transporter, to bring genes (DNA or RNA fragments) into a cell", recalls the chemist. "I then realized that DCFs were positively-charged molecules and readily adapted to DNA, which is negatively-charged. This gave me the idea of using them against bacteria, in the same way as certain antibiotics, which are also positively charged."

The two researchers then established an initial research project, with a thesis funded in cotutelle by UNamur, which culminated in 2021 in the publication of the first results showing the antibacterial activity of DCFs. "At the time, I was already working on antibacterial approaches, particularly against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a major pathogen that forms biofilms", explains Stéphane Vincent.

To combat antiseptics and antibiotics, bacteria proceed in several ways. In addition to developing mechanisms to block the functioning of antibiotics, they are able to aggregate or dock themselves to a surface, for example that of a medical implant, and cover themselves with a complex tangle of all sorts of molecules. The latter, known as biofilm, protects the bacteria from external aggression. These biofilms are a major public health problem, as they enable bacteria to survive even the most powerful antibiotics and are notably the cause of nosocomial diseases, infections contracted during a stay in a healthcare establishment.

"We have shown that certain DCFs are both capable of inhibiting biofilm production, but also of weakening them, thereby exposing bacteria to their environment", summarizes Stéphane Vincent.

Bolstered by these results and thanks to C2W, a "very competitive"European program that funds post-doctorates, Stéphane Vincent invited Dmytro Strilets, a Ukrainian chemist who had just completed his thesis under the supervision of Mihail Barboiu, to work in his laboratory on DCFs. The project, called TADAM and carried out in collaboration with researchers Tom Coenye of UGent and Charles Van der Henst of the VUB, then focused on the antibacterial and antibiofilm potential of DCFs against Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacterium which, along with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is on the list of pathogens of greatest concern defined by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The TADAM project is based on an ingenious assembly: DCFs are associated with special molecules known as pillarenes. The latter form a sort of cage around a proven antibiotic molecule, levofloxacin, thus improving its bioavailability and stability. The DCFs then have the role of inhibiting and disintegrating the biofilm, to enable the pillarenes to deliver their antibiotic directly to the bacteria thus exposed.

The results obtained by Stéphane Vincent's team are spectacular: the DCF-pillararene-antibiotic assembly is up to four times more effective than the antibiotic used alone! Noting that little work had yet been done on the antibiotic effect of these new molecules, the researchers decided to protect their invention by filing a joint patent, before going any further.

For everything still remains to be done. Firstly, because despite more than convincing results, how the assembly works is still obscure. "All the study of the mechanism of action has yet to be done, says Stéphane Vincent. "How is the antibiotic arranged in the pillararene cage? Why do DCFs have antibiofilm activity? How do DCFs and pillararenes fit together? All these questions are important, not only to understand our results, but also to eventually develop new generations of molecules."

And on this point, Stéphane Vincent wants to be particularly cautious. "We all dream, of course, of a universal molecule that will work on all pathogens, but we have to be humble, he pauses. "I've been working with biologists for many years, and I know that biological reality is infinitely more complex than our laboratory conditions. But it's because our results are so encouraging that we must persevere down this path."

The chemist already has several leads: "We're going to test the molecules on bacteria"circulating"suspended in a liquid, which behave very differently. And then we're also going to work on clinical isolates of pathogenic bacteria, to get a little closer to the real conditions under which these biofilms form."

Dmytro Strilets has just received a Chargé de Recherche mandate from the FNRS to develop second-generation DCFs and study their mode of action. The TADAM project has received funding from the University of Namur and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement n°101034383.

Strategically located at the intersection of the Andes mountain range, the Amazon rainforest, and the Galápagos Islands (made famous by a certain Charles Darwin), Ecuador is a hotspot of biodiversity. More than 150 years after the naturalist's observations, this country remains a popular field of study for scientists investigating how wild organisms adapt to changes in their environment.

As part of a two-year project funded by the ARES International Cooperation Commission (ARES-CCI), Professors Frédéric Silvestre and Alice Dennis from the Environmental and Evolutionary Biology Research Unit (URBE) at UNamur have formed a partnership with the Universidad Central Del Ecuador. The goal? To apply the genetic and epigenetic techniques developed in the Namur laboratories to fish and macroinvertebrates in Ecuadorian streams. 

An initial sampling campaign was conducted this summer, and another is planned for next spring, with Frédéric Silvestre and Alice Dennis participating. This collaboration also enabled URBE to welcome an Ecuadorian researcher who came to train in nanopore sequencing techniques, used in this project, and to carry out tests on samples of the species studied. Nanopore sequencing is a method of sequencing long DNA strands using an electrical signal. "This technique is very advantageous because it facilitates genome assembly and allows us to work on both the DNA sequence and its modifications. Nanopore sequencing also uses very small, portable equipment that is easy to use in the field," the researcher continues. The aim of using this technology is to demonstrate the feasibility of this process and, ultimately, to contribute to the development of more effective biodiversity conservation policies based on concrete genetic data.

Newly appointed Vice-Rector for International and External Relations at UNamur, Stéphane Leyens is involved in no fewer than four projects in Peru, working closely with the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC). Located in the Andes mountain range at an altitude of nearly 3,500 meters, this university has been receiving support from the ARES International Cooperation Commission (ARES-CCI) since 2009 to improve the quality of its teaching and strengthen its research capabilities. These projects are set against the backdrop of the new "university law," which has profoundly changed the landscape of higher education by emphasizing teacher training and the social responsibility of universities, which are now encouraged to integrate issues such as interculturality, the environment, and gender into a local rural development perspective. 

It must be said that the country's cultural, political, and socioeconomic context is undergoing profound change. As a result, rural communities are torn between their attachment to traditional lifestyles and the appeal of the economic opportunities offered by the modernization of agriculture or the growth of tourism. 

It is this tension that Stéphane Leyens is studying in the district of Ocongate (department of Cuzco), located on the route of the Southern Interoceanic Highway. "This paved road, connecting Lima to Sao Paulo and completed in 2006, has completely transformed the community and socio-economic dynamics of the Quechua populations of the high Andes, providing access to the mines of the Amazon, urban markets, higher education institutions, and opening up the region to tourism. The idea was therefore to study this change in dynamics through the prism of family and community decision-making, with a particular focus on education, agricultural activities, and gender issues," explains Stéphane Leyens. These questions—which particularly resonate with the realities experienced by the population—led to two doctoral research projects conducted by Peruvian researchers. 

In the same vein, and in a brand new project, the researcher is looking at the impact of the development of informal mining operations on the local economy from an original angle: Quechua epistemology. This project is based on a partnership with a team from the Universidad Nacional José María Arguedas (UNAJMA), which specializes in this approach.

"As part of the Master's degree in physics, we are required to do an internship in Belgium or elsewhere. I chose to fly to Brazil because local researchers are conducting research related to my thesis topic. It was also an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and experience life in a distant country.

It went very well, both academically and personally. I had the opportunity to help write an article and follow the entire publication process. The work was very loosely organized, and I was able to conduct my research independently. I quickly formed lasting friendships, particularly by participating in forró classes, a Brazilian dance.

If I had one piece of advice to give, it would be: go for it! Going far away can be scary, but it teaches you a lot, especially the fact that you are capable of bouncing back in sometimes unpredictable situations."

- Thaïs Nivaille, physics student

"vCircTrappist": behind this original name lies a tool that marks a turning point in virology research! Developed by PhD student Alexis Chasseur, a member of UNamur's Narilis Institute and now a member of the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), this tool enables the reliable, unbiased identification of circular RNAs generated by a wide range of pathogenic viruses, including herpes viruses, adenoviruses, retroviruses, leukemia viruses and influenza viruses.

"It's as if we've just discovered a new way for viruses to communicate and parasitize our cells. Understanding this mechanism means entering a new virus language", Alexis Chasseur simplifies.

"Based on new high-throughput RNA sequencing technologies, this circular RNA detection program captures a very large number of events, attesting to the circularization of RNAs produced by viruses," he details. While similar tools already exist in conventional cellular contexts, they focus solely on the detection of circular RNAs produced by conventional mechanisms, different from those of viruses. "vCircTrappist identifies any type of motif involved in RNA circularization and is adapted to the particularities of viral genomes. It thus enables us to discover a new landscape of gene expression by viruses", continues the researcher.

This breakthrough opens up new prospects for better understanding the role of these molecules in viral infections and could, ultimately, contribute to the development of new therapeutic strategies.

The study has just been published in PLOS Pathogens, a reference journal ranked Q1 in infectiology and virology, with an impact factor of 6.7 (JCR 2025).

Find out more about the objectives of this project in the FNRS magazine of February 2023 (pages 38-39).

The authors of this article are: Alexis S. Chasseur, Maxime Bellefroid, Mathilde Galais, Meijiao Gong, Pierre Lombard, Sarah Mathieu, Amandine Pecquet, Estelle Plant, Camille Ponsard, Laure Vreux, Carlo Yague-Sanz, Benjamin G. Dewals, Nicolas A. Gillet, Benoît Muylkens, Carine M. Van Lint, Damien Coupeau

This research, is part of the research project (PDR) funded by the FNRS since January 2023, entitled: "Identification and characterization of viral circular RNAs in cancers and cellular hyperproliferations induced by herpesviruses and lymphotropic retroviruses".

Thanks to close collaboration between the laboratories of Pr Carine Van Lint FNRS Research Director at ULB, Benjamin Dewals Professor at ULiège, Carlo Yague-Sanz, FNRS Scientific Collaborator at UNamur, and Nicolas Gillet, Director of the Department of Veterinary Medicine and member of UNamur's Narilis Institute, this consortium is focusing on the identification and understanding of novel viral circular RNAs and aims to characterize their involvement in viral replication and carcinogenesis.