Dr. Triantafyllos Kaloudis, Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYDAP SA), Greece

Triantafyllos (Tri) Kaloudis works in the Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company (EYDAP SA) – Laboratory of Organic Micropollutants (LOM), and he is Research Associate in the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (INN) – NCSR Demokritos. His research interests include environmental chemistry, water quality, emerging contaminants in water with focus on cyanobacteria metabolites, taste & odour compounds and their transformation products, and advanced oxidation processes for water treatment. He is chair of the COST Actions CYANOCOST (toxic cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins) and WaterTOP (taste & odour of water).

Dr. Ingrid Chorus, Federal Environment Agency, Berlin, Germany

From her employment at the Federal Environment Agency of Germany and in the context of leading a World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre, Ingrid Chorus has extensive professional experience in the areas of managing drinking water to keep it safe for human consumption as well as in protecting water resources. Her specific focus has been on phytoplankton ecology, toxic cyanobacteria and lake restoration, combining research and policy development. Most recently, together with Martin Welker she edited the second edition of the WHO guidebook “Toxic Cyanobacteria in Water”, which is scheduled to be published early in March 2021, and she supported WHO in the derivation of cyanotoxin guideline values.

Dr. Andreja Kust, University of California, Berkeley, United States

Dr. Andreja Kust is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley in Jill Banfield’s laboratory interrogating microbial behaviour and microbe-microbe interactions in the context of a model cyanobacterial community. She has broad experience in studying cyanobacteria including their morphological diversity and ecophysiology, with focus on the cyanobacterial metabolic potential for production of harmful, and medically important secondary metabolites. In 2019 she received a dean awarded PhD in Limnology at the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic. During her PhD studies she was an active member of national and international projects. She established collaboration and conducted research at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, University of Helsinki, Finland, and University Paris Diderot, France. She was a part of the interdisciplinary large-scale pond study (Urban algae) of young scientists, which included over twenty teams across Europe. She was a member of the organizing committee of the international conference for young limnologists (FBFW, 2017), volunteered as a support technician during the international conference SAME14 in Croatia, and organized visiting seminars at the Institute of Hydrobiology, České Budějovice, to welcome scientists from Croatia, France and Argentina.

Speaker/Presentation

Time in CET

Dr. Triantafyllos Kaloudis

Chair Introduction

5:00 – 5:05 pm

Dr. Ingrid Chorus

New WHO Cyanotoxin Guideline Values and Guidance for Controlling Occurrence

Investigations around the world are screening for the occurrence of toxic cyanobacteria, and such programmes are increasingly including not only microcystins but also cylindrospermopsins as well as anatoxins and saxitoxins. The experience in Toledo in 2014, where microcystin concentrations in drinking water briefly exceeded the World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline value (GV) of 1 µg/L with up to 2.5 µg/L highlighted a need for guidance on concentrations that can be tolerated for short periods while mitigation measures are being implemented. In response to this demand, WHO has now derived short-term GVs for all 4 groups of cyanotoxins as well as values for recreational exposure and a lifetime GV also for cylindrospermopsins in drinking water. WHO further emphasises the need to address cyanotoxin occurrence comprehensively, with risk assessment and management from catchment to consumer. The new EU Drinking Water Directive (EU DWD) has also adopted this risk-based approach (for all substances that might occur in water, including cyanotoxins). The presentation will explain the derivation of the new GVs, outline how the WHO proposes to address this hazard comprehensively and how the EU DWD is building a bridge to the EU Water Framework Directive to achieve a focus on effective mitigation of the locally most relevant hazards, including cyanotoxins.

5:05 – 5:25 pm

Dr. Andreja Kust

Fantastic Cyanopeptides and How to Find Them: Global Natural Product Social Molecular Networking (GNPS)

Reports on the co-occurrence of potentially harmful cyanobacterial peptides during cyanobacterial proliferation addressed the need for the monitoring of metabolites beyond regularly targeted cyanotoxins. High-performance liquid chromatography connected to tandem mass spectrometry with high resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC-HRMS/MS), and introduction of Global Natural Product Social molecular networking (GNPS) has been proven as a powerful platform for the detection of known, and discovery of unknown metabolites. While manual analysis of MS/MS data requires a personal data base and hours of work and training, application of GNPS workflow enables automatic analysis and curation of high numbers MS/MS data. Application of these tools sheds light on the complexity and vast cyanobacterial potential for secondary metabolites production, even in environmental samples where cyanobacterial are of low abundance.

5:25 – 5:45 pm

Q&A Session

5:45 – 5:55 pm

Closing of Webinar
Dr. Triantafyllos Kaloudis

5:55 – 6:00 pm