Projects
Lipidomic, microbial and functional characterization of triggers of post-operative recurrence in Crohn’s disease KU Leuven
Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic, relapsing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) which is caused by a complex interaction of genetic, immune, microbial and environmental factors. Surgical resection is needed in up to 70% of CD patients. At the luminal side of the intestine, pioneering work of our group demonstrated that in two-thirds of patients undergoing surgery, new CD lesions recur within weeks to months, but only in the presence of the ...
Association between different measures of global and local adiposity with clinico-pathological features, circulating markers, lipidomic profiles and outcome in postmenopausal breast cancer patients treated in the IBCSG 35-07 (SOLE) / BIG 1-07 trial KU Leuven
More than half of the Belgian women are either overweight or obese. Obese breast cancer (BC) patients are at higher risk of recurrence. In the breast, enlarged adipocytes and Crown-like Structures (CLS), composed by a dead or dying adipocytes surrounded by macrophages, have been reported as mediators of pro-inflammatory markers of adiposity. While promising, these markers have only been evaluated in relatively small and retrospective series ...
Association between different measures of global and local adiposity with clinico-pathological features, circulating markers, lipidomic profiles and outcome in postmenopausal breast cancer patients treated in the IBCSG 35-07 (SOLE)/BIG 1-07 trial KU Leuven
We will aim at investigating the association between different measures of global (BMI) and local (CLS and size of adipocytes) adiposity with clinico-pathological features and outcome in 3000 early postmenopausal breast cancer patients treated in the IBCSG 35-07 (SOLE/BIG 1-07 trial. Additionally we will explore plasmatic circulating endocrine and inflammatory markers together with lipidomic profiles before and during treatment in 100 of ...
Lipidomic alterations in prostate cancer as mediators and markers of androgen responses to androgen receptor antagonists. KU Leuven
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men in the developed world. Particularly management of metastatic cancer is challenging. Because prostate epithelial cells are exquisitely dependent on male sex hormones, called androgens, the primary treatment for men with metastatic PCa is suppression of androgen production, often combined with antagonists that directly ...
BOF Sabbatical 2024 - P. Ponsaerts. University of Antwerp
FWO Research Sabbatical 2023-2024 (Prof. P. Ponsaerts) University of Antwerp
Xenotransplantation of iPSC-derived microglia to elucidate the impact of C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion on neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration. University of Antwerp
Understanding vulnerability in ALS using multi-omics KU Leuven
Neurons are highly polarized cells, which can have very long axons. In the case of motor neurons, these projections can extend up to one meter in length. This poses a challenge for protein homeostasis in the distal synaptic structures of these neurons, including neuromuscular junctions (NMJs), which are the critical connections between motor neurons and muscles controlling our most basic motor functions [including walking and breathing], and ...
Clinical Decision Support Systems KU Leuven
In current day medical practice, physicians are confronted with a tsunami of medical data per patient, that come from a multitude of heterogeneous data sources (clinical measurements, images from non-invasive scans, tensors from invasive measurements (e.g. MSI), ‘omics’-data (genomics, lipidomics,..)). In this PhD, we will develop population based clinical decision support systems to assist the physician in diagnostics and therapy ...