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Researcher

Guy Van Camp

  • Research Expertise:For several decades, Guy Van Camp has a strong international reputation is in the field of hereditary hearing loss, with a main emphasis on nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing impairment and otosclerosis. The research aims at the benefit for patients in diagnostics and therapy. In this research, a strong link is maintained with the Medical Genetics diagnostics department, which is a reference center for genetic diagnostics of hearing loss within Belgium and Europe. Recently, a joint project with Otolaryngology UZA was initiated, aiming at the exploration of gene therapy for COCH, a frequent cause of late onset hearing loss in Belgium. Triggered by the GSDME gene involved in hearing loss and cancer, a research line in cancer genetics and epigenetics was started in 2014. A tight collaboration has been initiated with the oncology department at the University of Antwerp, resulting in the start of several new projects. These projects study pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, mesothelioma and colorectal cancer, with a strong emphasis on genomic research, biomarker development and liquid biopsies. A major investment in bioinformatics was made, with bioinformaticians joining the research team, resulting in a growing expertise and custom pipelines for data analysis of exome, genome and transciptome data, as well as data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and other large datasets. Over the last couple of years, the lab has developed a specific expertise in methylation biomarkers for cancer and is pioneering the development of these markers for both early detection and therapy guidance. Large sets of differentially methylated sites have been discovered for different types of cancer using bioinformatics analyses. In addition, the lab is working on (patented) ingenious and novel improved assays for the simultaneous analysis of high numbers of methylation sites in liquid biopsies.
  • Keywords:CANCER, GENETIC ANALYSIS, EPIGENETICS, GENETIC VARIATION, GENETIC DISEASE, Biomedical sciences (incl. biochemistry)
  • Disciplines:Analysis of next-generation sequence data, Bioinformatics of disease, Cancer biology, Cancer diagnosis
  • Research techniques:Technologically, the laboratory has state-of-the art genetic equipment, including next generation sequencing equipment (Illumina Hiseq, Nextseq, Miseq) and microarray infrastructure. There is a strong expertise in the bioinformatics pipelines for sequence data analysis.
  • Users of research expertise:The laboratory offers its expertise and equipment to other academic research teams for collaborative research.