Speakers - 2026

Biography

Associate Professor Juan Du earned her PhD from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, where she researched HPV in related cancers. During her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, USA, she developed a novel recombination-based genetic engineering method for bacterial drug delivery. Since 2016, she has led her own group at Karolinska Institutet, focusing on the microbiome in women's health. She serves as a reviewer for prestigious journals like Nature Communications and Genome Medicine, and for European grants such as the ERC, and is actively involved in translating research findings into clinical applications.

Research interests

Dr. Du and her group at KI work on exploring the microbiome's critical role in diseases, with a particular focus on women's health. The group has uncovered a close interaction between the oral and vaginal microbiota in the development of cervical cancer, and her research has demonstrated that the expression of host genes is closely linked to the composition of the vaginal microbiome. The group has also used a multi-omics approach and advanced techniques to uncover a therapeutic potential from the gut microbiota against infections.