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The Isala train is embarking on its journey once more! Women are invited to write history together, advance global women’s health and to discover which bacteria live in their vagina. Would you like to join us? Be ready! 🙂

The Isala team is very grateful for the thousands of Isala women that participated in the first research phase. But did you ever wonder what this group looked like? When I started my Master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Antwerp, I got the opportunity to choose a Master’s thesis from a wide range of topics. I realized very quickly that one topic really stood out: ‘inclusive citizen science’, using the Isala project as a case study.

Last summer, the Dora team organized the very first symposium to launch the Nigerian sister project. The event was held in an auditorium at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria and attracted a lot of people, including college staff, students, and members of the public, including the State Commissioner for Health of Anambra (the state where the university is located). Let’s look back on this special day! In addition to that, the Dora team was welcomed in a radio show. No need to worry if you missed it because in this blog you will discover how it went, as if you were there. 🙂

Woohoo! Thanks to the vaginal swabs of our Isala participants, we discovered a completely new bacterial species in the vagina! It was up to us to name this new bacterium ourselves and we called it Lactobacillus isalae. With this, we wanted to honor Isala Van Diest, but the scientists reviewing our proposal emphasized that we should also highlight our Isala project in the description. Quite an honor! This wasn’t possible without our amazing participants. Keep on reading to discover more about this new vaginal bacterium and the scientific article dedicated to it! 😊

Your attention please! Today the most important results of our first Isala phase are published in a scientific journal. Not just any kind of journal, no, we are referring to the one-and-only prestigious Nature Microbiology journal. The preprint of our scientific article (this is kind of a ‘test print’ that is subjected to some feedback rounds) was available for some time now, but from today on the official publication is a fact! We are very proud and, above all, very grateful to have reached this milestone. 😊 This publication is a very nice recognition for Isala. In this blog several authors who largely contributed to this publication will take the floor. Definitely keep on reading!

Now, 3.5 years after the start of our Isala project, we already achieved many milestones: more than 6000 women participated, we found more than 10 types of bacteria, almost 3000 vaginal bacteria were cultivated in the lab, a team of more than 25 researchers and so on. And we keep on growing! Isala was awarded the Grand EU Prize for Citizen Science (be sure to check our previous blog). This prize was officially awarded last month at the ARS Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria! The ARS Electronica Festival is a place where artists, scientists, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and activists come together from all over the world. In short, a breeding ground for new ideas and insights, with the focus in 2023 on the topic: “Who owns the truth?”. Join us on this amazing trip! 😊