Building Bridges in Leukocyte Biology Webinar Series
Through volunteer efforts, SLB will be offering a monthly series of innovative talks spanning a width breadth of interests related to the field. Registration is free for ALL. On-demand recordings are available for members only.
Our next speaker will be Maria Casanova-Acebes, from CNIO who will present on July 23rd, 2025 12-1pm eastern. The title of this talk is "TREMMing on lung metastatic immunity". This session will not be recorded - be sure to join the live event!
 Since January 2021 María Casanova-Acebes is a Junior Group Leader at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO, Madrid), leading the Laboratory of Cancer Immunity. As a graduate student with Andrés Hidalgo at CNIC, she established for the first time how circadian cues control neutrophil aging and clearance from circulation, which in turn control the physiology of hematopoietic and metastasis-prone organs such as the bone marrow, and the lung (Cell 2023, JEM 2018). Awarded a Human Frontiers Long-Term postdoctoral fellowship, she then moved to Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York to carry out her postdoctoral studies under the supervision of Miriam Merad, where she discovered that resident macrophages in the lung control early regulatory T cell expansion and EMT programs in lung cancer (Nature 2021).
The Casanova-Acebes lab investigates how micro- and macro-environmental factors shape myeloid cells in tumors, intending to uncover new actionable targets in this compartment to treat cancer. As of 2025, María Casanova-Acebes has published >25 articles in top scientific journals, which have been cited > 7,000 times. She has received several prizes and awards, including an ERC Starting Grant in 2023, and works as Associate Editor at Journal of Experimental Medicine. Maria is actively involved in public outreach and research dissemination projects, and she has been recently selected as a member of the Spanish Young Academy in 2023 and Secretary of the Spanish Society of Immunology. In her (little!) spare time, María is a passionate reader and loves playing with her kids.
Look for these talks lined up for the future...
- Samarth Hedge, Icahn School of Medicine; Hess Center for Science and Medicine - Sept. 24th, 2025
- Carmen Gloria Feijoo, Universidad Andres Bello - October 22nd, 2025
- Silvia Uriarte, University of Louisville - November 19th, 2025
- Margarida Santos Saraiva, i3S- Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde - December 17th, 2025
If you would like to present at a future SLB Building Bridges webinar series, please contact Sofia De Oliveira at [email protected]. See below for the full Building Bridges Webinar Series Mission.
Past Building Bridges Webinars available on-demand for SLB Members (login and membership required):
- Marta Mastrogiovanni, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, "Dissecting the role of embryogenic inflammation on Clonal Hematopoiesis"
- Juliana Zuliani, Universidade Federal de Rondônia "Cr-LAAO, an L-amino acid oxidase from Calloselasma rhodostoma venom, induces FPR-dependent vital NETosis in human neutrophils"
- Laurel Hind, University of Colorado Boulder "Inflammation-on-a-Chip: Redefining How We Study Immune Responses"
- Loic Rolas, Queen Mary University of London "Investigating vascular ageing and its impact on immune cell function: When neutrophils get mad!"
- Collins Osei-Sarpong, Institute of Experimental Pathology "Hepatic neutrophil extracellular traps limit dissemination of gut-derived products" (live only session)
- Hawa Racine Thiamm, Standford University, "Cellular Biophysics of Neutrophils – Learning from NETosis" (live only session)
- Irene Salinas, University of New Mexico, "Granulocyte recruitment in the African lungfish skin during estivation"
- Melissa Ng, Singapore Immunology Network, "Deterministic reprogramming of neutrophils within tumors"
- Savini Thrikawala, Clemson University,"Glucocorticoids suppress neutrophil control of Aspergillus hyphal growth in zebrafish larvae"
- Prashanth Thevkar Nagesh, BIDMC/Harvard Medical School, "In vivo Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibition attenuates alcohol-associated liver disease by regulating granulopoiesis."
- Elsa Bou Ghanem, University at Buffalo, "Changes in Neutrophil-pneumococcal Interactions During Aging"
- Juan de Dios Ruiz Rosado, Nationwide Children’s Hospital “Phagocyte NADPH Oxidase: Fine-Tuning Neutrophil's Antimicrobial and Inflammatory Arsenal Against Uropathogenic E. coli”.
- Aminata Coulibaly, West Virginia University "Using Neutrophils to Modulate Brain Output"
- Elizabeth Wohlfert, University at Buffalo "Muscling through Chronic Infection"
Building Bridges in Leukocyte Biology Webinar
Mission
To provide a safe platform to highlight the research done by 1) trainees, 2) scientists from underrepresented groups in the field (please check footnote *) and 3) scientists with major caregiver roles at home that restrict their travel to conferences limiting their careers (young children, dependent person, etc). We also seek to keep the leukocyte community engaged in active and fruitful scientific discussions between conferences.
Vision
Conferences have a limited number of slots for presentations which drastically limits the amount of good science that can be shown and discussed in these venues. Trainees and young faculty from underrepresented groups in the field have less chances to be invited or selected to present their work at conferences and therefore their science has less visibility. We want to provide a way to give visibility to those that usually do not have it and promote a more diverse and inclusive environment in the leukocyte field.In addition, we want to help build a dynamic and engaged leukocyte community to advance the field, this webinar series will also promote networking, collaborations and sharing of resources amongst the labs working with different leukocytes on different fields.
Webinar format
• Monthly meeting on ZOOM - 4th Wednesday of the month (tentative: 12:00 pm EST/9:00 am PST)
• 1h (5 min introduction, 45 minutes presentation ,10 minutes discussion)
Please note that presentations WILL BE RECORDED (with speaker permission), placed at SLB archive and available for all members to view at any time. Webinars will be promoted on the SLB website, email list and social media.
If you are a SLB member that fits the eligibility criteria and are interested in presenting at BBinLB webinar series, please submit the following materials to [email protected]:
• Abstract
• CV or Biosketch
• Provide specific information about eligibility (trainees, scientist from underrepresented groups in the field, and/or scientist with major caregiver roles).
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