Doctoral candidates

Tongkun Guo was born in China. His background lies in the fields of genomics, bioinformatics, and statistics. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology at Qingdao University, China, and obtained his Master's degree in Bioinformatics from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. During his Master's, he focused on multi-omics analysis and clinical data, particularly in metagenomics, investigating the relationship between autism spectrum disorder and gut microbes in children. Tongkun has also gained industrial experience working as a data product manager, building biomedical databases and providing drug development consulting. Currently, Tongkun is working at Leibniz-HKI in Jena, Germany. His research project involves associating native gut microbiota profiles with cancer cachexia across different types of cancers.

Research domain: Computational & Systems Biology
WP 1: Association studies

Tongkun.Guo@leibniz-hki.de

Mariem is a passionate researcher coming from Tunisia. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Experimental Biology in 2022 from the Faculty of Science, Tunisia, where she conducted research on the antibacterial and antioxidant properties of polysaccharides extracted from Cinnamomum Cassia, focusing on their potential therapeutic applications. In 2024, she completed her Master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology at the University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy, where she gained expertise in Public health, Epidemiology and Metagenomics, particularly 16S rRNA sequencing for microbial community analysis. Currently, Mariem is pursuing a PhD at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), applying epidemiological methods to investigate the association between cachexia-related gut microbiota with health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and survival outcomes.

Research domain: Clinical Epidemiology and Microbiome Science
WP 1: Association studies

mariem.hachani@dkfz-heidelberg.de

Mianyan Li was born in China and completed her Bachelor’s degree in Animal Science at Nanjing Agricultural University (2021). She then obtained a Master’s degree in Animal Genetics from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (2024). During her studies, she participated in an exchange program at University College Dublin (2023). Her Master's thesis was focused on applying machine learning in genomic prediction to improve the prediction accuracy.

Mianyan is currently a PhD researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) in Germany. Her research focuses on microbiome dynamics, metabolic modeling, and bioinformatics-driven approaches to studying host-microbiome interactions.

Research domain: Computational & Systems Biology
WP1: Association studies

Mianyan.Li@leibniz-hki.de

Adam is from Hungary, where he earned his BSc in Biochemical Engineering before completing his Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology in 2024. Throughout his studies, he gained expertise in protein engineering, directed protein evolution, molecular biology, and genetic engineering.

For his master’s thesis, he worked at a preclinical pharmaceutical company in Hungary, where he engineered lactic acid bacteria-based advanced microbiome therapeutics. His thesis focused on innovative approaches to microbiome-based treatments.

Currently, Adam is a PhD student in Professor Morten Sommer’s lab at the Technical University of Denmark. „As part of the MiCCrobioTAckle project, his research centers on designing and engineering advanced microbiome therapeutics with the potential to combat Cancer Cachexia.

Research domain: Microbiology & Synthetic Biology
WP2: Bioengineering

adaje@dtu.dk

Bo Sun is from China where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering at Harbin Institute of Technology. He conducted his thesis research on the molecular mechanism of healthy ageing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then completed his Master’s degree in Systems and Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London, focusing on improving the modelling of the cell cycle for clinical anti-cancer drug screening.

Bo has also gained industrial experience working in AstraZeneca Cambridge analysing the effects and pharmacokinetics of anti-cancer drugs through model simulations, and at Pfizer Inc., where he engaged in clinical drug research. Now, he is working at the Leibniz-HKI as a PhD student. His project will focus on metabolic modelling and synthetic engineering of gut microbiome to generate novel strategies for cancer cachexia therapy.

Research domain: Computational & Systems Biology
WP2: Bioengineering

Bo.Sun@leibniz-hki.de

Louise Diependaele is a researcher passionate about understanding the complex interplay between cancer cachexia and the gut microbiome. Born in Ghent, Belgium, she holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Bioengineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, as well as a second Master's in business economics from the University of Ghent.

After gaining three years of industry experience, Louise embarked on her PhD journey, focusing on the development of in vivo and in vitro models to study cancer cachexia and its associated gut dysbiosis. Her research aims to uncover key microbiome and metabolic mechanisms underlying the condition. In the later stages of her project, she will explore advanced microbiome-based therapeutics to evaluate in both models.

Research domain: Microbiology and model design
WP 3: Causality studies

loudi@dtu.dk

Anna is an MD PhD student at Amsterdam UMC, supervised by Prof. Max Nieuwdorp. Originally from Athens, she studied medicine at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Next, she gained two years of research experience as a clinical scientist in the research group “Energy Metabolism” at the German Diabetes Center (DDZ) in Düsseldorf, where she focused on the association between GDF15 and hepatic mitochondrial respiration in obesity and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). Her PhD research focuses on the therapeutic potential of encapsulated fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) in cancer cachexia patients. Anna is passionate about translational metabolism research and aims to understand how contrasting conditions like obesity and cachexia can provide insights into metabolic regulation and potential therapeutic targets, with an emphasis on the gut microbiome.

Research domain: Microbiology & Clinical Research
WP 4: Faecal Microbiotal Transplantation (FMT) trials

a.gianna@amsterdamumc.nl

Sagnik Roy is from India where he obtained his Bachelor of technology degree in biotechnology with his thesis focusing on mathematical modeling of microbial growth. Then, he moved to Germany to pursue a Master of science degree in molecular life sciences at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. There, he completed his thesis, which focused on transcriptomics and genetic analysis of an alternatively spliced fungal effector gene. During his Master's, he also worked as a part-time student assistant in multiple research groups in Jena, focusing on gut microbiome 16S rRNA sequence analysis and metabolic modelling. After completing his Master's thesis, he moved to the Netherlands to work at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre as a PhD on the project titled "Bioinformatic analyses of gut microbiota of cancer and cancer cachexia".

Research domain: Bioinformatics
WP4: Faecal Microbiotal Transplantation (FMT) trials

s.roy@amsterdamumc.nl