Projects
Characterization of signaling pathways involved in differenttiation of pluripotent stem cells towards liver cells KU Leuven
Characterization of the in vivo generated hepatic progeny from adult human skin-derived precursor cells and evaluation of their potential use for in vitro safetyscreening of pharmaceuticals and liver disease. Vrije Universiteit Brussel
They are as such highly susceptible to toxicity leading to so-called Drug Induced Liver Injury (DILI). Currently, DILI is a major cause for drug attrition, demonstrating that the available models for assessing liver toxicity are not performing adequately. Hence, the pharmaceutical industry urgently needs novel, preferably in vitro test systems ...
Development of a superior in vitro model for drug hepatoxicity screening through 3D printing of crosslinkable biopolymers. Ghent University
Developing drugs is a time- and cost-intensive process. During drug development, different phases are required for a drug to finally reach the market. During the discovery and development phase, thousands of compounds are synthesized, of which the most appropriate reach the preclinical phase. During this phase, in vitro and in vivo tests are performed in an attempt to track toxicity. Due to ethical as well as economic constraints, there is a ...
Improve the reprogramming of human adult skin-derived fibroblasts into functional hepatocytes by directed evolution of hepatocyte nuclear factors Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The identification of copy number variations that impede differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells. Vrije Universiteit Brussel
If a CNV confers a culture advantage to the ...
CRISPR-based activation and inhibition of coding and short/long-noncoding transcripts to create mature hepatocytes from pluripotent stem cells KU Leuven
If mature hepatocytes could be generated from pluripotent stem cell derived, they would be of significant interest for studies related to drug metabolisation and drug toxicity, or hepatocyte infections.
Although hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs), with some features of hepatocytes can be generated, others and we identified a substantial number of hurdles, including transcriptional differences, as well as metabolic immaturity of HLCs ...
Homesickness strikes Hepatocytes Deciphering the role of environmentally mediated deregulation of YAP/TAZ in dedifferentiation of in vitro cultured hepatocytes KU Leuven
This thesis manuscript consists of two separate and unrelated parts. In a first part, I will discuss the role of the Hippo pathway in stem cells and stem cell derived liver progeny. The second part, will be a treatise of a theoretical study of the cell cycle.
Part I
Today, primary human liver cells (especially hepatocytes, but also hepatic stellate cells) remain the gold standard in vitro model to study ...
Developing an in vivo humanized mouse model suitable for the study of hepatotropic viral infection KU Leuven
The pharmaceutical industry is in high need of efficient and physiologically relevant in vitro and in vivo models to study hepatotropic viruses, screen for potential antiviral drugs and test for liver toxicity that might be caused by these and other drugs. Current in vitro models rely on primary human hepatocytes (PHHs) and hepatoma cell lines, which have major drawbacks. As an alternative hepatocyte source, the use of human pluripotent stem ...