Projects
Unlocking Therapeutic Potential: Harnessing Extracellular Vesicles and miRNAs to Combat Muscle Wasting Disorders KU Leuven
Approximately 40% of the human body’s mass is comprised of skeletal muscle, making it the largest organ in the human body. These muscles play a crucial role in providing stability, supporting movement, and maintaining the integrity of internal organs. Importantly, skeletal muscles possess the inherent ability to grow and regenerate, whether in response to injury or as a result of physiological conditions such as exercise. This study explores ...
Decellularized muscle as a scaffold for extraocular muscle tissue engineering KU Leuven
Injuries to skeletal muscle are dramatically impacting patient’s lives, limiting their daily activities. Depending on the defect, current treatment is either not possible or involves autologous tissue transfer, which leads to donor site morbidity and incomplete functional recovery. Tissue engineered muscle may provide an alternative for muscle repair and can also be used to study development, disease and drug effects in vitro. We propose to ...
Metabolic fate of glucose in osteolineage cells in normal conditions and hyperglycemia. KU Leuven
Bone loss and bone fragility often lead to fractures which cause important morbidity. The current therapies halt further bone loss, but drugs increasing bone mass are scarce. Additional osteo-anabolic strategies are therefore needed. Hormones and growth factors can instruct osteolineage cells to proliferate and become matrix-producing osteoblasts, but this activation is only effective when sufficient nutrients are present. Osteoblasts are ...
Fat primes the liver for hepatocellular carcinoma development by inducing a Warburg metabolism KU Leuven
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common and deadliest cancers worldwide, with an overall mortality rate of 93%. A major risk factor for HCC development is obesity with concomitant insulin resistance. Already today 30% of all HCC cases are related to obesity and insulin resistance. However, obesity and insulin resistance by their own are not sufficient to drive HCC development in mice. Surprisingly, the combination of ...
Pioneering the Modernisation of the Laws of War and Peace: Balthazar de Ayala (c. 1548-1584) and the Emergence of the Law of Nations KU Leuven
The field of international law owes a significant debt to the works of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) who, together with Alberico Gentili (1552-1608), has been recognised as a progenitor of a modern and secular law of nations. While much scholarly attention has been devoted to their contributions, other influential authors have predominantly remained in their shadow. One of these is Balthazar de Ayala (c. 1548-1584), a Leuven educated jurist and ...
Decoding direct reprogramming to make beta-cells for diabetics. KU Leuven
Diabetes is a serious chronic disease globally affecting millions of patients. Diabetics lack β cells for the production of insulin, a hormone that regulate blood glucose level. Currently, β cell transplantation in diabetics is the only option to restore insulin production and potentially cure diabetes. However, donor β cells are scarce. Human pluripotent stem cells provide a potential unlimited source of β cells, but can form tumors. This is ...
The role of super-enhancer regulated SOX11 in regulation of SWI/SNF and PRC2 activity in adrenergic neuroblastoma Ghent University
Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extra cranial solid tumor during early childhood and arises from progenitors of the sympathetic nervous system. High risk NBs with poor prognosis show few recurrent mutations but typical patterns of gains or losses of chromosomal segments. Those chromosomal aberrations are assumed to result in dosage effects for proteins contributing to tumor formation and/or progression. My project will focus on the role ...
How does a sophisticated brain develop? The ontogeny of brain complexity in Octopus vulgaris KU Leuven
Octopuses are one of the strangest and most intriguing boneless animals on our planet. They are capable of opening jars, regrowing amputated arms, solving problems and each has its own personality. Nevertheless, how and why the octopus could develop such a complex brain - almost as complex as that of a dog - is still a big mystery. By comparing known building plans of model organisms like fruit flies and mice to how octopus brains develop, we ...
In silico modeling of the influence of scaffold properties on the in vivo tissue regeneration response in large skeletal defects KU Leuven
Bone tissue engineering (TE) uses a combination of cells, biomaterials and growth factors for the treatment of large bone defects. In the current state-of-the-art, scaffolds are seeded with progenitor cells, boosted with a growth factor (cocktail) and subsequently implanted in vivo. Despite the fact that some successful results have been published, bone TE to date still suffers from unpredictable and qualitatively inferior results. A possible ...