Children’s book writer Matthijs Meeuwsen visited our research group at Radboudumc to immerse himself in the fascinating world of slime, and to explore how our research might be translated into a story for young readers.
We are happy to welcome three new students to the PedResp group at the start of the new academic year!
I’m Julia Kiefmann, and I recently completed the first year of my Master’s in Medical Biology at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. As part of my first year internship, I joined the Muco-Kids study under the supervision of Lilly Verhagen and Marieke van der Zalm.
In June and July, we were delighted to welcome three colleagues from Stellenbosch University to the Radboudumc in Nijmegen.
In a new episode of Global Health Talks, hosted by Niki Stastny, Lilly Verhagen talks about her work as a paediatrician-scientist and her research on respiratory infections and mucosal immunity in children across different parts of the world.
On 11 June, the Paediatric Respiratory Infection & Immunity Group traded the lab and hospital for the golf course for an afternoon. Together with our South African co-PIs, we headed to Golf Course Landgoed Bleijenbeek for a group golf clinic.
The first week of June took several group members to Bologna, Italy, for the 2026 Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID).
During the 2026 DuCaPHEN Conference, the project coordinators of the RSV Roadmap CAS-islands project had the opportunity to present to a diverse audience of public health professionals and stakeholders from the Dutch Caribbean islands.
Together with colleagues from UMC Utrecht, we found that young children with recurrent respiratory tract infections have lower levels of Bifidobacterium in their gut microbiome, which was also associated with mucosal IgA responses. The findings add to growing evidence that the gut microbiome and mucosal immunity are closely connected.
Our research on RSV seasonality across the six Caribbean islands of the Dutch Kingdom showed that RSV circulation peaks earlier than in the Netherlands, with most infections occurring between June and December.
