HeMiBio (related to project EU376-B) Vrije Universiteit Brussel
In the project we made the following advances beyond the state of the art:
1. CELLS: We characterized for the first ...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by the progressive and selective degeneration of motor neurons. This leads to a complete paralysis of the ALS patients, which is due to the loss of contact between the motor neurons and the muscle cells. In this study, we investigated the role of non-neuronal cells, and more in particular of the astrocytes, in this selective motor neuron pathology. ...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor neuron (MN) degeneration, cells which ensure brain-muscle communication. This communication is done at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) level, a specialized synapse between lower MNs and the skeletal muscle. In ALS, MN loss and NMJ denervation lead to muscle atrophy, responsible for muscular weakness and ultimately, patient’s death. As such, ...
Over the past two decades, the drug approval rate has considerably delayed while post-marketing drug failure became increasingly prominent creating a ‘drying pipeline’ in drug development. This is largely attributed to the limited predictive value of 2D in vitro and animal models. Therefore, higher levels of physiological relevance are pursued through the development of organ-on-a-chip (OOC) models that recapitulate functional units of ...
In this project, we aim at generating 3D vascularized human cardiac organoids on-chip as unprecedented in vitro disease model to unravel novel molecular mechanistic insights on the pathogenesis of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD)- and Alström Syndrome (ALMS)-associated cardiomyopathy. The 3D organoids will be generated via an autonomous cell aggregation process using a medium-throughput multi-microwells platform, and the disease phenotypes ...