President’s word

The President’s word 2025

Strasbourg, January 21, 2025

Dear colleagues, dear members and supporters of GERLI,

I wish you a very happy new year, an excellent health, and lots of success with your projects !

GERLI is starting this new year with the recent successes of GERLI International Lipid Meetings. Lipids: from molecular aspects to human diseases in Paris in 2023;  Lipids: from Sea to Fork in Brest/Plouzané at the European Institute for Marine Studies in September 2024. The latter proposed several sessions on the biology of lipids ‘in the sea’: Structural diversity of lipids from summits to deep sea, Lipid markers in trophic ecology, Environmental/climatic issues of omega 3, just to quote a few, and a session on Marine lipids in nutrition co-organized with the French Society of Nutrition (SFN). This congress brought together 128 participants including 30% foreigners from thirteen countries (England, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Hong Kong, Canada, Mauritania, Norway, USA, Belgium, Germany, France, United Arab Emirates), covering many aspects from fundamental lipidology to applications in human health and biotechnology. A big thank you to the organizers Margaux Mathieu Resuge and Philippe Soudant, and their colleagues !  Thanks as well to our partners from the socio-economic world for the success of this congress, Elsevier, GreenSea, Avanti, Fermentalg, MicroPhyt, Conserverie Chancerelle, Larodan, Cayman, Sciex, Gattefossé, Lipotype, Polaris, and Lipolytech. The excellent participation in this Brest congress will find a platform in the publication of a special issue of BIOCHIMIE (Elsevier Science). Great thanks also to Malika Hassini and Claude Forest, long-time supporters of GERLI in the editorial office of BIOCHIMIE, as well as Bryan Adriaanse, at Elsevier, for the strong support provided to GERLI since 2022. The 20^th GERLI International Lipid Meeting will take place in Strasbourg, from November 3 to 5, 2025, entitled ‘Lipids in cell structures and metabolism‘, with a program posted on our website, including a session co-organized with the Société Française d’Etude des Lipides (SFEL). This conference will once again provide ample room for exchanges at European and international levels around numerous aspects of lipid research. GERLI is pleased to award thesis prizes – 67 thesis prizes awarded since 1982 – honoring young scientists distinguished for their work relating to the biology of lipids. In 2024, the GERLI thesis prize was awarded to Khaled Tighanimine (Paris), for his work entitled “Metabolic adaptations of senescent cells: glycerol-3-phosphate and phosphoethanolamine as novel actors of lipid remodeling during senescence induction”. In 2024 again, the GERLI-SFN thesis prize (created in 2022 thanks to an interaction between the two scientific societies) was awarded to Thomas Guerbette (Rennes), for his work entitled “Mitochondrial function of intestinal epithelial cells and intestinal homeostasis in the obese “. A call for applications for the GERLI and GERLI-SFN awards will be launched very soon. 

GERLI brings together a set of transversal skills and expertises, allowing the organization of scientific meetings on lipids with very broad international participation. This is a strong point for encouraging the participation of your doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows in these meetings, and to join our scientific society. To carry out the action of GERLI, to promote the sciences of lipids in an immoderate manner, our scientific society which is an association known as the “1901 law”, needs your support, donations, patronage and of course your contributions. I am counting on you to make your contribution and ask for others around you. GERLI offers a statutory (€50) or non-statutory (€25) annual membership and other advantageous rates (‘laboratory’, €200 for 4 people then €25 per additional membership). Please note that membership opens access to the preferential registration rate for GERLI congresses and also allows access to membership status of the European Federation for the Science and Technology of Lipids (EFL), with the advantages registration fees for EFL congresses. I would like to encourage you to join now and support the GERLI, and to contribute to the dissemination, influence and national and international recognition of your research on lipids. The excellent work of our webmaster Frédéric Carrière on the GERLI website will allow you to choose your membership for 2025, in particular with easy online payment. 

Finally, on behalf of GERLI I would like to very warmly thank Agnès Girard-Egrot and Olivier Laprévote for the work they have accomplished in past and recent years with the GERLI scientific council, with passion and enthusiasm, raising high GERLI’s values: scientific quality of exchanges, and conviviality.

With my best regards, 

                                                                                              Hubert Schaller

                                                                                              GERLI president