Kelsey Huus

Beyond thrilled to announce that I will be taking up a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa starting July 2026. The Huus Lab will focus on gut microbiome, diet, and human immune health. Can't wait to get started!

Personal plug: if any Canadian institutions are looking for new faculty, I’m entering the market with a research program on diet-microbe-immune interactions for the improvement of human vaccine responses, and would love the chance to return home! (4/4)

Big thanks to all coauthors: this work was a hugely collaborative effort with support from clinicians at the Institute for Tropical Medicine and many great colleagues & collaborators not on BlueSky (3/4).

Why? Gut microbial flagellin stimulate the innate immune system, acting as a ‘natural adjuvant’. Their ability to produce flagellin is modulated via diet. It may therefore be possible to intervene to reduce fever risk or conversely, to promote stronger immune responses to vaccines. (2/4).

Flagellin in the human gut microbiome is a diet-adjustable adjuvant for vaccination The intestinal microbiota is thought to modulate immune responsiveness to vaccines. Human studies on this topic, however, have yielded inconsistent results[1][1],[2][2]. We hypothesized that the micro...

Thrilled to share my postdoctoral work with @microbiome.bsky.social on BioRxiv. Ever wonder why you got a fever after your booster shot, but your friend didn’t? We find that both diet and the gut microbiome are associated with risk of fever after vaccination (1/4).
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...