INSPIRE News
Dr Léa Roussin on secondment with Pileje, Paris.
Lea joined APC Microbiome Ireland, a Research Ireland Centre based at University College Cork as an INSPIRE Postdoctoral Fellow to investigate the functional definition of vagus-innervated neural pathways involved in the gut microbiota-regulation of spatial memory and she tells us how her secondment at Pileje has helped her with her science communication skills. Pileje is a French pharmaceutical company focusing on four therapeutic fields: Microbiota, Phytotherapy, Nutrition and Micronutrition. They are the first supplier of food supplements in France and have an international reach through subsidiaries and distributors.
During my experience at Pileje, I have been welcomed into the “Medical and science communication team” part of the “promotion of health” department. My main mission for this first part of the secondment was to participate in the redaction of the 32nd issue of the “Revue des microbiotes”, a magazine aimed at clinicians that summarizes current research in the microbiota field, redacted in French and translated in English and Spanish. Each issue is centred around a main topic, for which an 8-page long overview is written by an expert, and an interview is conducted with another expert for a more personal point of view of the field. The rest of each issue consists of short chronicles on the state of microbiome research, as well as articles summaries, all redacted by the scientific board of the magazine, composed of clinicians and researchers from various fields. The main topic of this issue was “Phagotherapy”. For this issue, I contacted different clinicians working on this topic, conducted and redacted an interview with one of them, helped coordinate the issue and proofread and corrected all the written pieces. I also participated to the final board meeting with the editorial board and scientific committee to validate the final draft of the magazine. Aside from this, I have also written summaries of previous issues of the magazines, to be used by the marketing department. I also participated in meetings to organize the anniversary event of the magazine, that will take place on the 20th of November 2025. This event is focused on the theme “Microbiome, environment and human health” and will be accompanied by a special issue of the magazine. To help organize the program and this special issue, I have helped with reviewing literature and created a draft for a summary figure on the topic to be featured as a double page in the magazine.
Overall, this was a really enriching experience, that allowed me to strengthen and broaden my network, improve my skills in science communication, and allowed me to learn more about broader topics surrounding the microbiome field. I also learned a lot about events planning, and editorial work. I had the opportunity to interact with professionals from many different backgrounds (Pharmacists, marketing and sales representatives, communication representatives) which was really enriching in a professional and personal basis. Finally, I also had the opportunity to discuss with the representative of preclinical research, which was very insightful, as we had a very similar background, but her work is quite different from academic research.