BMSS Lipidomics SIG Meeting 2025

Join us for the first BMSS Lipidomics 1-Day meeting on the 8th of July 2025 in Cardiff, UK!

Lipidomics is one of the more recent fields of research which has rapidly evolved thanks to technology advancements in mass spectrometry. The aim of the BMSS lipidomics special interest group is to provide a forum for discussions, training and to connect researchers working on mass spectrometry-based lipidomics. We cover the study of lipids, including lipid subclass profiling, structural elucidation, bioinformatics tools, and the translation of lipid data into biological meaning.

This year’s meeting will be supported by LIPID MAPS®.

LIPID MAPS is a multi-institutionally supported website that provides access to many innovative lipidomics resources. Hosting the globally used LIPID MAPS Classification and Nomenclature and the largest curated lipid structure database in the world, LIPID MAPS has internationally led the field since 2003, in lipid curation, classification, and nomenclature. Their open-access databases are continuously updated, they regularly produce new informatics tools and lipidomics-focused training activities and serve an international lipid community of over 60K users.

THE MEETING:

This meeting will showcase the latest research and technical advances in lipidomics. Our Plenary Speakers are Professor Valerie O’Donnell (Cardiff University), Dr Cristina Legido-Quigley (King’s College London), and Dr William Griffiths (Swansea University). Our Keynote Speaker is Dr Matthew Conroy (LIPID MAPS®).

Valerie O’Donnell, PhD, FMeDSci is Professor of Biochemistry, Cardiff University.

Valerie O’Donnell’s research is focused on lipid signalling in innate immune cells.  Her lab is recognised for their discoveries on bioactive oxidized lipids generated by blood cells and platelets, that promote thrombosis and regulate innate immunity. Her group in Cardiff have identified several families of lipids, elucidated their structures, uncovered their biochemical mechanisms of formation, then characterised their pro-coagulant and immunoregulatory functions.  Aside from this, her work has demonstrated how metabolism of bioactive lipids by mitochondria is needed for platelet aggregation and found that blood pressure can be impacted by the gut microbiome. 

Valerie is overall lead of LIPID MAPS, an ELIXIR Core Data Resource, and a member of the Global Biodata Coalition.  Prior to working at Cardiff, she was a Parker B Frances Fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and EU Biotech/Marie Curie at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where she researched mechanisms of free radical and oxidative stress signalling in the vasculature.
 

Cristina Legido-Quigley, PhD, is affiliated with King’s College London and with the Steno Diabetes Centre Copenhagen.

Cristina is also a Lundbeck Foundation fellow. Her current appointments are Reader in Systems Medicine, Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, Life Science & Medicine, King’s College London, UK; Senior Scientific Consultant, Steno-Diabetes Centre, Copenhagen, Denmark; Director and founder of the consultancy company BrainLogia, UK; Chair of International Clinical Metabolomics, Denmark; International Scientific Advisor Board Member, Alzheimer’s Foundation, Paris, France.

Cristina's main area of interest is applying lipidomics and metabolomics research in neurometabolism, to study how the brain copes with disease, as well as finding clinical tests for healthy aging, Alzheimer's, cognition, diabetes and metabolic diseases. Her discoveries span fatty molecules that are important for cognition, molecules that in liver alert to tissue damage, together with modulating molecular pathways for improving the treatment of diabetes. She is also researching risk scores leveraging biomarkers and clinical data, multiomics and machine learning for better personalised diagnoses in the clinic. She has been a group leader at King's College London since 2006. In 2018 she moved to Steno, a hospital and research centre in Denmark, to be the Head of Systems Medicine. She shares her findings in more than 200 scientific publications in the biotechnology and medical fields (https://legido-quigley-lab.com/research.html to browse main publications).      

William J Griffiths, PhD, is the Chair of Mass Spectrometry, Swansea University Medical School

Bill received his BSc and PhD in Chemistry from University College, Cardiff. He was trained in biomedical mass spectrometry working with Professor Jan Sjövall at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.  Bill has held academic positions in Kingston Jamaica, Stockholm Sweden and London. In 2007 Bill moved to Swansea University to take the Chair of Mass Spectrometry.

Bill’s research interests are in cholesterol biosynthesis and metabolism, particularly pathways of bile acid biosynthesis.  Bill works closely with long term collaborator Professor Yuqin Wang, and the focus of their group’s work is on the involvement of oxysterols in biology, particularly inborn errors of metabolism, neurodegenerative disease and the immune system.

When living in the Caribbean, Bill played international rugby for Jamaica.  

Matthew Conory, PhD, is the Senior Biocurator for the LIPID MAPS databases,

Matthew is responsible for data addition and integrity across the various resources. He has extensive experience in molecular data curation, having previously worked as a curator for the Protein Data Bank (PDB) at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) for ten years. His background is in protein structural biology.

 MEETING REGISTRATION:

Registration is open until 24^th June 2025. Links to the respective registration pages for the event can be found on the left side of this webpage.

SPONSORS & EXHIBITORS:

The BMSS Lipidomics SIG cannot function without the generous support of our sponsors & exhibitors. You can register to exhibit on the Exhibitor page, and we warmly invite you to contact the organisers, Christine Hinz and Andrea Lopez (christine.hinz@shimadzu.co.uk; alopez@resolian.com.) if you would like to discuss sponsoring the meeting.

BMSS Travel Grants
Qualifying BMSS members are eligible to apply to the Society’s John Beynon Travel and Conference fund for assistance. Click here for more information.

BMSS Carers Support Grants
Qualifying BMSS members may apply to the Society’s Carer’s Support Fund for assistance. Click here for more information.