Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "The geographical strategy of parties in the candidate selection process: the Belgian political parties in the election of the Belgian Chamber (1987-2010)" "Bart Maddens" "VIVES - Research Centre for Regional Economics, Public Governance Institute" "When Belgian voters go to the polling booth on election day, they are presented with a set of candidate lists of different political parties. Voters know that they can either cast a list vote, which implies that they endorse the party list in its entirety, or they can cast an individual preferential vote for one or several candidates from the same list. What most voters are unaware of, however, is the amount of effort and preparation that political parties have invested in drafting those candidate lists and selecting candidates, long before election day.In list proportional systems such as Belgium, party selectorates are inclined to carefully balance their lists in terms of various candidate characteristics, in order to include candidates from all social groups. There are both electoral and organizational incentives to balance the ticket. From the electoral perspective, the exclusion of any major social group could signal discrimination, which discourages voters and could result into an electoral setback. From the organizational perspective, balancing the ticket decreases the chances of internal conflicts between the various party factions.While previous research has traditionally focused on the gender and ethnic dimensions of the candidate selection process, this dissertation examines the geographical aspect of ticket-balancing. In Belgium, but also in other list proportional systems worldwide, parties go out of their way to select candidates from all regions, municipalities or other localities within the electoral district. This is an intriguing observation, as empirical research shows that elections are becoming increasingly nationalized and homogenized and the role of the local seems to have diminished over time.Based on the case of the Belgian Lower House elections between 1987 and 2010, this dissertation aims to tackle this research problem and examines how and why political parties geographically balance their ticket. How important are local and geographical candidate characteristics for parties, vis-à-vis other candidate characteristics? Which intraparty mechanism are at work to realize geographical representation on party lists? What impact does geographical representation have on the electoral result? And do political parties develop a clear strategy with regard to geographical representation, for instance in response to electoral losses in some districts or local areas?Chapter 2 presents a descriptive analysis of the place of residence of Belgian parliamentary candidates, and shows that the share of small municipality candidates has systematically decreased over the years. The analysis also shows that the number of represented municipalities on party lists decreased, possibly as a result of the consecutive electoral district reforms that took place in Belgium during the period of investigation.Chapter 3 and 4 focus on the importance of local candidate characteristics as candidate nomination criteria and electoral assets. The results suggest that political parties especially nominate local mayors, incumbents and party employees for realistic list positions, and that candidates from larger municipalities and cities are more often assigned to these attractive positions. Moreover, for marginal positions party selectorates look for local office holders from larger municipalities. With regard to election results, a multilevel analysis shows that municipality size in itself does not have a significant effect on the number of preferential votes, but the expected interaction between local office and municipality size (which was also found in Chapter 3) was confirmed. This implies that the electoral advantage of holding a local office increases with one’s municipality size in the district. These findings show that local office holders, and especially local-office holders in large cities, dominate intra-party competition (both in terms of candidate selection as election results).With regard to the determinants of geographical representation, the empirical analysis in Chapter 5 has shown that especially the level of decentralization in candidate selection processes plays the decisive role. If local party branches are allowed to participate, a more balanced representation of municipalities within the district is reached. Although the analysis in Chapter 6 suggests that geographical dispersion in itself does not lead to electoral victories, geographical representation on candidate lists can be an important antidote for intraparty turmoil.From the individual politician’s perspective, this dissertation demonstrates the added value of combining parliamentary office with local office, as a ‘cumul des mandats’ provides a career insurance for national politicians and gives them a head start in intraparty candidate selection and electoral competition. From the political party perspective, it seems that investing in local elections and local party branches still pays off as both the aggregate list result as the individual results of party candidates are strongly determined by local roots." "Engineering of chimeric bacteriophage-derived endolysins and selection of staphylolytic and streptolytic candidates for the treatment of Gram-positive mammary gland infections in cows." "Evelyne Meyer" "Department of Veterinary and Biosciences, Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Biochemistry, Department of Biotechnology" "Mastitis, an infectious disease of the mammary gland in cows, is mainly caused by Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus uberis. These udder infections are difficult to cure due to 1. the intracellular persistence of pathogens, 2. the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant strains and 3. biofilm formation, three factors that lead to a low cure rate of intramammary antibiotics. Consequently, there is an urgent need for alternative antimicrobial agents to treat mastitis more effectively. In this proposal, bacterial virus-encoded endolysins are put forward as a novel and sustainable type of antimicrobials with high killing efficacy, specific binding capacity and low chance of resistance development. This project will apply new protein engineering approaches to generate unique fusion enzymes (""enzy-biotics"") that eliminate intramammary infections caused by streptococci and staphylococci. These chimeric endolysins are known to act intracellularly and kill dormant bacteria in biofilms. Our group's biotechnological expertise will be combined with an in-house developed mouse model, to not only assess the in vitro but also the in vivo efficacy and safety of our novel antimicrobial endolysins. This proposal therefore combines fundamental insights in the most recent protein engineering technology with relevant animal models and points towards the possible veterinary application in dairy agriculture, in line with the breakthrough of designer endolysins in human medicine." "Preclinical PET imaging of allele-selective mHTT lowering as candidate treatment for Huntington's Disease." "Steven Staelens" "Molecular Imaging and Radiology (MIRA)" "Huntington's Disease (HD) is a progressive autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by a genetic mutation in the huntingtin gene (HTT), which encodes for mutant huntingtin (mHTT), the causative agent of the disorder. Since lowering the levels of toxic mHTT is postulated to halt disease progression, the use of engineered zinc finger protein transcription repressors (ZFP-TR) to selectively suppress the mutant HTT allele represents a novel candidate treatment for HD. A major limitation in the assessment of therapeutic efficacy is the lack of objective non-invasive markers. We recently validated the first-ever radioligand to image in vivo mHTT levels using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging in mice. The aim of this project is to assess the preclinical relevance of the use of ZFP-TR at different disease stages as candidate therapeutic intervention. This work will provide proof of efficacy for an mHTT lowering HD therapy in the living (rodent) brain by measuring mHTT in parallel to molecular targets for phenotypic recovery in wellcharacterized mouse models of HD. This multi-modal approach consisting of non-invasive in vivo PET imaging in combination with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and post-mortem techniques will represent a strategic multi-disciplinary platform to assess the efficacy of the ZFP-TR therapeutic efficacy providing a key contribution on the timing of intervention, ultimately leading to clinical translation in the future. GENERAL -" "Identification of causal mutations in patients with unexplained mental retardation and congenital abnormalities by high throughput sequencing of selected candidate genes" "Geert Mortier" "Department of Pediatrics and medical genetics" "Chromosomal aberrations as well as pointmutations are an important cause of mental retardation and multipele congenital abnormalities (MR/MCA). In this project, the newest technologies in human genetics (selective resequencing) will be used to resequence 3000 candidate genes for MR/MCA in order to understand the underlying cause of MR/MCA and to gain insights in normal human embryogenesis." "Gendered candidate turnover in 14 established parliamentary democracies. Biases in the secret garden of politics." "Bart Maddens" "Public Governance Institute, Humanities and Social Sciences Group Services" "Unequal candidate turnover might be one of the reasons why full equality in gender representation is often not accomplished, even after the introduction of gender quotas. This research project builds further on my doctoral research on candidate turnover. The key theoretical frame is the demand and supply model of political recruitment. First, this project digs deeper into the questions: Whether candidate turnover is higher for women than for men? How quota impact this renewal rate across gender? If this gendered turnover is contingent on established turnover drivers at the systemic or party level? Hypotheses will be tested by means of a RIGLS multilevel fractional logit model and a MCMC augmented beta regression on a general and a weighted turnover measure. We will make use of comparative data, containing candidates of represented political parties within 14 established parliamentary democracies, both with list-PR and majority electoral systems. Second, to better understand selectorate preferences, we will complement the statistical analysis on electoral data with a discrete-choice-experimental design to investigate so-called stated preferences of national and regional party leaders. Third, this project investigates the supply of candidates by combining the PPDB with the ESS data to investigate the link between gendered candidate selection and citizens’ political engagement." "Toward a better understanding and management of the candidate experience throughout the application process" "Rein De Cooman" "Department of Work and Organisation Studies (main work address Brussels), Department of Work and Organisation Studies (main work address Antwerp)" "As the war for talent persists, research into employee hiring is becoming increasingly more important. Even though research examining applicant reactions is limited, the consequences of candidate experiences are potentially far-reaching for both candidates and organisations. Addressing real-world organizational problems requires an integrated, multidisciplinary approach, but also require the development of frameworks that cut across the different levels of the organization. As a result, the overall aim of this research project is to broaden the scope of current employee recruitment, assessment and selection research by incorporating (1) insights from different disciplines (i.e. economics, marketing, operations management, work and organizational psychology) and (2) adopting a multilevel perspective (i.e. a focus on both organizational-level and individual-level processes)." "Targeting the acid pocket: evaluation of a candidate cornerstone of GERD treatment" "Guy Boeckxstaens" "Translational Research in GastroIntestinal Disorders" "Achalasia is an uncommon chronic motility disorder of the esophagus with an annual incidence of 1 per 100.000 persons, characterized by absence of peristalsis and defective relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter (LES). Resulting in impaired bolus propulsion and stasis of food, with dysphagia and regurgitation as main symptoms. The cause of achalasia remains unknown, therefore treatment is confined to dilation or myotomy of the LES. Long-term management of achalasia is challenging. First, a majority of patients requires retreatment during the course of the disease. However, there is no consensus on patient selection. The latter is important to avoid stasis of food, even asymptomatic, in view of the risk for dysplasia and development of mega-esophagus, associated with higher morbidity and refractory symptoms. Second, it still remains unclear if patients with longstanding achalasia should be screened for dysplasia. Due to misinterpretation of symptoms caused by esophageal carcinoma as exacerbation of achalasia, the diagnosis is mostly made in an advanced stage of disease, illustrating the need for early detection of dysplastic lesions. Detection of dysplasia in achalasia requires high resolution advanced endoscopy combined with molecular detection of genetic abnormalities. We aim to improve long-term management of patients with achalasia by validating functional markers selecting patients for retreatment, and by evaluating new approaches to detect esophageal dysplasia." "Recombinant expression of RNAi by means of selected candidate vaccine antigens of Ostertagia ostertagi in Caenorhabditis elegans" "Edwin Claerebout" "Department of Translational Physiology, Infectiology and Public Health" "geen abstract" "Functional annotation of human cold adaptation candidate genes in Drosophila" "Toomas Kivisild" "Department of Human Genetics" "Genetic adaptations are important in determining long-term survivaland distribution of species across a range of different environments.Humans are a tropically adapted species that expanded only recentlyto high latitudes. The genetic basis and the molecular mechanismsthat govern human adaptation to high latitude environments,including adaptations to diet and cold, remain incompletelyunderstood. We previously identified genomic regions with evidenceof positive selection in human populations living in the extreme coldconditions in Central and Northeast Siberia. Many of these genomicregions include genes of unknown function while showing asignificant enrichment of liver-expression consistent with theproposed role of the liver as an important metabolic hub. We will useDrosophila melanogaster as a genetic model for the functionalannotation of poorly annotated genes associated with cold adaptationin humans to gain a better understanding of the genetic basis and themolecular mechanisms behind human cold adaptation." "Assessment of Mechanical Dyssynchrony as Selection Criterion for CRT Treatment" "Jens-Uwe Voigt" "Cardiology, Narodowy Instytut Kardiologii, Universitaetsklinikum Wuerzburg, AZ Sint-Jan Brugge Oostende, Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg, OLV Ziekenhuis Aalst, AZ Maria Middelares, AZ Delta, Universitätsmedizin Rostock, UZA-Universitair Ziekenhuis Antwerpen, UZ Gent, Semmelweis Egyetem, Akademia Medyczna Im. Karola Marcinkowsk, ETH Zürich" "Cardiac resynchronization therapy is an accepted treatment for patients with heart failure and conduction delays, where the contraction of the left ventricular chamber is re-synchronized by means of a dedicated pacemaker device with several electrodes. Current guideline criteria for selecting patients, however, result in a non-responder rate of approximately 35%. Some studies suggest that such non-responders are even at higher risk because of an inappropriate treatment. In the past years, the promotor of this project has worked on the characterization of specific motion and deformation patterns of the left ventricle in patient candidates for CRT by echocardiography. We could demonstrate with several retrospectives studies, including also a multicenter analysis of more than 1000 patients after CRT implantation, that the presence of specific motion and deformation patterns (apical rocking, septal flash) is strongly associated with therapy success and that the predictive value of the patterns is much higher than that of current guideline criteria. We therefore propose a prospective, randomized study to test these patterns as patient selection criterion for CRT in comparison to current guideline criteria in order to provide strong evidence that can influence treatment recommendation of scientific societies and with this, improve patient management and outcome. In Belgium, ca 1500 CRT devices are implanted per year with costs for the health care system of ca. 23 million Euro. Given the high non-responder rate, devices worth 8 million Euro are implanted without effect. Even if all unnecessary CRT+Defibrillator implantations were replaced by a regular implantable defibrillator (ICD), approximately 2.1 million Euro could be saved with better patient selection. If our propose approach would help to reduce the non-responder rate only by 50%, a yearly cost-benefit of more than 1 Million Euro could be achieved. "