Alain Vanderplasschen completed his studies in veterinary medicine in 1991. He was one of the last students to graduate from the veterinary school of Cureghem in Brussels. With his diploma in hand he became a candidate researcher for the FNRS, and defended a doctoral dissertation in Sciences, which dealt with Bovine herpesvirus 4 (Bo-HV 4), in 1995. Devoted to basic research in biology, he then began work on a “thèse d’agrégation”, which he carried out at the William Dunn School of Pathology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford (UK). Next, he became a researcher with the FNRS.

Returning to Liège in 1998, Alain Vanderplasschen continued his career with the FNRS, and became the first veterinarian to be named to a permanent position in the history of the FNRS. He climbed the FNRS ladder, becoming a lead researcher in 2002 and a director of research in 2006. He was at that time 39 years old, and the youngest director of research in the FNRS. Upon his return to England he began to study the salivary glands of ticks, hoping to find a way to fight the infections they transmit.

Selection of publications

COSTES B., STALIN RAJ V., MICHEL B., FOURNIER G., THIRION M., GILLET L., MAST J., LIEFFRIG F., BREMONT M. and VANDERPLASSCHEN A., The major portal of entry of koi herpesvirus in cyprinus carpio is the skin, J Virol (2009), 83 (7), 2819-2830

COSTES B., FOURNIER G., MICHEL B., DELFORGE C., RAJ V. S., DEWALS B., GILLET L., DRION P., BODY A., SCHYNTS F., LIEFFRIG F. & VANDERPLASSCHEN A., Cloning of koi herpesvirus genome as an infectious bacterial artificial chromosome: demonstration that disruption of the TK locus induces a partial attenuation in Cyprinus carpio koi. J Virol., 2008

DEWALS B., BOUDRY C., FARNIR F., DRION P. & VANDERPLASSCHEN A., Malignant Catarrhal Fever Induced by Alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 Is Associated with Proliferation of CD8 T Cells Supporting a Latent Infection. in PLoS ONE 3, e1627, 2008.

DAIX V., SCHROEDER H., PRAET N., GEORGIN J. P., CHIAPPINO I., GILLET L., de FAYS K., DECREM Y., LEBOULLE G., GODFROID E., BOLLEN A., PASTORET P. P., GERN L., SHARP P. M. & VANDERPLASSCHEN A., Ixodes ticks belonging to the Ixodes ricinus complex encode a family of anticomplement proteins, in Insect Mol Biol 16, 155-66, 2007.

SCHROEDER H., DAIX V.., GILLET L., RENAULD J. C. & VANDERPLASSCHEN A., The paralogous salivary anti-complement proteins IRAC I and IRAC II encoded by Ixodes ricinus ticks have broad and complementary inhibitory activities against the complement of different host species, in Microbes Infect 9, 247-50, 2007.

MACHIELS B., GILLET L., NASCIMENTO BRITO S. D., DRION P., DELFORGE C., NIZET Y., GIANELLO P., BONA C., COSTES B., MARKINE-GORIAYNOFF N. & VANDERPLASSCHEN A., Natural antibody-complement dependent neutralization of bovine herpesvirus 4 by human serum., in Microbes Infect 9, 1530-7, 2007.