Professor Debby Bogaert

Professor and Chair of Paediatric Medicine
MRC Centre for Inflammation Research
University of Edinburgh
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Professor Bogaert works as a physician scientist at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. In 2009, she started as one of the first to study the potential role of the ecosystem (microbiome) of the respiratory tract in relation to health and disease. Her group performed multiple cross-sectional studies in children, adults and elderly, and started several intensive microbiome-driven birth-cohort studies in healthy infants, premature infants, newborns with cystic fibrosis and children with NEONS. They found important ecological links between risk factors and respiratory healthy in children as well as adults. Moreover, they found that, during serious viral infections such as RSV, that inflammation and severity of infections was driven by co-signaling of the microbial ecosystem. Currently, they have expanded their clinical and mechanistic studies towards the development of oral, and gut microbiome, mycobiome and resistome, in relation to (un)beneficial drivers and consequences of paediatric and adult  health.

The funding for her current work is received by the Dutch government (NWO Vidi and ZonMW priority medicine grants), Scottish government (CSO/NRS Scottish senior clinical fellow), UK Medical Research Council (MRC), and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.