Thomas Balligand

Thomas Balligand trained as an MD and started his junior residency in internal medicine at the UCLouvain in Brussels, Belgium. As a med student, he was already interested in fundamental research. This led him to start a PhD at the de Duve Institute in the lab of Prof. Stefan Constantinescu. He worked on myeloproliferative neoplasms driven by CALR mutations. During this time, he acquired many different skills pertaining to research in life sciences, published several papers, participated in international collaborations and had many opportunities to present his work at international conferences.

By the end of his PhD, his love for science and attraction for a career in research had kept expanding. This led him to become a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Hidde Ploegh at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in Boston, MA, USA. There, he worked on designing small antibody fragments, termed "nanobodies", as tools to improve the treatment of different types of diseases, including influenza and cancers among others. He has also acquired extensive experience in the design of nanobody-based radiotracers for PET/CT imaging in in vivo models.

Since October 2024, he holds the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Namur, where he teaches Histology and Cellular biology to medical, pharmaceutical, biomedical and veterinary students. In parallel with his teaching duties, he leads a research group - the NanoChimera Lab (NaCL) of the Faculty of Medicine (URPhyM) and is a member of the NARILIS research institute.  

His research focused on the design and production of nanobody and lectin conjugates that can specifically target cancer or virus-infected cells in order to perform targeted drug delivery.

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