Last years Saskia Braber gained interest in the immunomodulatory capacity of nutritional components, which already started during her Master Animal Sciences (2004) with the specialization cell biology/immunology at the Wageningen University. At this University, she conducted an internship about immunomodulation by probiotics in laying hens followed by an internship at Nutricia Research.
In January 2007, she joined the Immunopharmacology group (Faculty of Science, Utrecht University) as a PhD student, where she worked on a project of Top Institute Pharma, entitled, CXC receptors: potential targets for chronic inflammatory diseases”. Her thesis focused on unravelling the mechanisms underlying cigarette smoke-induced lung emphysema and finding solutions to tackle the sustained airway inflammation. During this PhD project, she spent some time at the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine at University of Alabama in Birmingham, USA.
Thereafter, she was employed as a junior post doc at the department of Veterinary Pharmacology, Pharmacy and Toxicology, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, Utrecht University. The subject of this postdoctoral project was immunomodulation by oligosaccharides and she got the opportunity to supervise three PhD students as co-promotor. Again, it fascinated her that specific nutritional components, are by no means inferior to medical treatment.
After this 5-year period, she was employed by Danone Nutricia Research in Utrecht for one year, where she worked on a nutritional concept (non-digestible oligosaccharides) for the treatment, prevention and alleviation of mycotoxin exposure, which has been patented.
After NWO-CCC awarded her grant proposal, entitled “Improving lung health by carbohydrate-directed changes in intestinal microbiota in calves” (in collaboration with Wageningen University), she came back as a senior post doc at the department of Immunopharmacology, Utrecht University. In 2020, she got a permanent position and started to develop her own research group and continued her research line together with 10 PhD students (co-promotor) and several collaborations with companies, such as Friesland Campina, Inbiose and Nutricia Research.