Event Details

12^th November at 12:00
Onsite event
in Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Autumn 2026 poster

Prof. Miguel Soares, Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine, Portugal
Metabolic adaptation as a defence strategy against infection

Host: Antonio Sousa (aggode@utu.fi)

Coffee and sandwich served at 11:45, first come first serve!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have lunch and discuss with Prof. Soares after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in a friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

Prof. Soares’ lab studies how immunity evolved in multicellular organisms as a means to limit the fitness costs imposed by symbiotic interactions with different classes of microbes. Resistance is a cardinal feature of immunity, whereby soluble and cellular components of the immune system sense and target pathogenic microorganisms for containment, destruction, or expulsion. In addition, multicellular organisms deploy another defense strategy, referred to as disease tolerance, which does not target microbes directly. This evolutionarily conserved strategy relies on stress responses that rewire host energy metabolism. At the Inflammation Laboratory, researchers aim to identify and characterize how these stress responses engage inter-organ communication processes that rewire energy metabolism in order to limit the fitness costs associated with infections caused by different classes of microbes. The objective is to provide a transformative understanding of host–microbe interactions and their translational impact on the treatment of global infectious diseases.

Selected publications

Soares MP, Jentho E. Ageing rewires the body’s tolerance to infection. Nature. 2026 Feb;650(8102):558-559

Martins R, Blankehaus B, Braza F, Mesquita M, Ventura P, Singh S, Weis S, Pires M, Pagnotta S, Wu Q, Cardoso S, Jentho E, Figueiredo A, Faísca P, Nóvoa A, Morais VA, Wculek SK, Sancho D, Mallo M, Soares MP. Homeostatic control of energy metabolism by monocyte-derived macrophages. EMBO J. 2026 Jan;45(1):106-150

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.

Wu Q, Sacomboio E, Valente de Souza L, Martins R, Kitoko J, Cardoso S, Ademolue TW, Paixão T, Lehtimäki J, Figueiredo A, Norden C, Tharaux PL, Weiss G, Wang F, Ramos S, Soares MP. Renal control of life-threatening malarial anemia. Cell Rep. 2023 Feb 28;42(2):112057

Singh S, Bastos-Amador P, Thompson JA, Truglio M, Yilmaz B, Cardoso S, Sobral D, Soares MP. Glycan-based shaping of the microbiota during primate evolution. Elife. 2021 May 19;10:e67450.

General information

• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience.
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars (BKEM1020; UTU), print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Autumn 2026 image credits to Samuel Svärd: Whole mount immunofluorescent staining of the mouse retina. Image acquired on 3i CSU-W1 Spinning disk with 10x objective.