European MSCA Fellowship Supports Research in the Siegel Lab

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Her project “Decoding the Impact of Nuclear Organization on the Hierarchical VSG Activation in African Trypanosomes” investigates a fundamental question in parasitology: how pathogens evade the host immune system through antigenic variation. Antigenic variation is a widely employed strategy for evading host immune responses, and it relies on similar functional principles even in evolutionarily divergent pathogens. In Trypanosoma brucei, double-stranded breaks within antigen genes, known as VSGs, act as triggers for switching. Her project tests the hypothesis that DNA damage reshapes nuclear dynamics, so that spatial proximity and sequence identity bias DNA repair template choice and determine the hierarchy of antigen activation.

Originally from Argentina, Pachano studied Biotechnology at the University of San Martín, where her interest in parasitology began during her master’s thesis on Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease. She then joined the ParaFrap PhD programme in France, completing her doctorate on Toxoplasma gondii at the Université Grenoble Alpes. In November 2025 she joined the Siegel lab.

This achievement comes alongside another recognition: Zhibek Keneskhanova, a PhD candidate in the Siegel lab, has been awarded the 2025 Serendipity Award.