Affiliation: University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover

Dr. Guillaume Goyette-Desjardins is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Bernd Lepenies at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover. He obtained his PhD in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Montreal with Dr. Mariela Segura (co-advisors Dr. Marie-Rose Van Calsteren and Dr. René Roy). During his doctoral training, he performed the purification and contributed to the determination of the capsular polysaccharide structures for eight serotypes of Streptococcus suis, one of the most important porcine bacterial pathogen and an emerging zoonotic agent. Using those newly described polysaccharides, he evaluated their antigenicity and immunogenicity in vitro and in vivo. It lead to the discovery that, unlike other serotypes of S. suis, the serotype 3 polysaccharide is highly immunogenic as it induces an opsonizing response composed of IgG and IgM. In addition, he developed for the first time a glycoconjugate vaccine composed of the serotype 2 polysaccharide conjugated to tetanus toxoid to induce a protective T-dependent antibody response. A proof of concept performed in pigs showed protection against S. suis, and more importantly, the untapped potential of glycoconjugate vaccines in the fight against invasive bacterial infections in veterinary medicine. Currently, he is interested in better understanding the influence of glycosylation patterns on protein immunogenicity. For that, he is establishing a platform of cell lines of different origins and glyco-engineered cell lines to produce various glycovariants. Subsequently, immunogenicity studies with these glycovariants will lead hopefully to the discovery of highly immunogenic glycovariants that could serve as self-adjuvanted vaccine antigens.