Author Archives: hDMT

Editorial November 2021

Vital network on Organ-on-Chip With this last hDMT newsletter of 2021 we look back to another fruitful year with many new initiatives, grants and researchers in the field of Organ-on-Chip. During the recent annual hDMT Consortium meeting with many participants online, we have officially ended the lustrum year by presenting the booklet on 5 years of hDMT. We would like to thank all people within the hDMT Consortium for their valuable contribution to the Organ-on-Chip field and for being part of our vital community during the past 5 years. Now the year 2022 lies ahead with new big challenges for...

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New Eye-on-Chip models from Amsterdam UMC

The team of Prof Arthur Bergen, department of Human Genetics, Amsterdam UMC, has recently developed various human retina-on-a-chip models.These models represent a number of genetically determined eye diseases, such as age-related macula degeneration, glaucoma and retinitis pigmentosa. Next to WT models (Figure 1) , we have developed a number of CRISPR/Cas9 knock-out and iPSC-derived patient organoids (not shown) and a new class of biosynthetic organoids (Figure 2). Obviously, such models are essential for deep understanding of human eye development and disease pathology and to develop or test emerging therapies. According to recent international patient surveys, vision disorders reduce the quality...

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Fifth annual hDMT Consortium meeting online concludes the lustrum activities

In contrast to the previous ones, this year the annual hDMT Consortium meeting took place online as a half day meeting on November 12th. More than 110 participants, in particular many young researchers, joined the meeting that was chaired by Christine Mummery, chair of hDMT. New projects, that have started already or were just submitted for funding, were presented by the coordinators, and illustrated the many interdisciplinary collaborations, that are so characteristic for hDMT. Ten junior researchers showed their latest results about various Organ-on-Chip technologies and models and gave their view on the future research. The presentations were fascinating and...

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Two NWO Open Competition Grants for Angelo Accardo

The first project, funded by the Open Competition ENW-XS Grant (€ 50.000), is about 3D engineered brain cancer microenvironments for proton radiobiology and will be carried out in collaboration with the Leiden University Medical Center and the Holland Proton Therapy Center: “Glioblastoma is a devastating cancer of the brain with an extremely poor prognosis. A relatively new cancer treatment is radiotherapy with proton beams, which can be targeted to destroy cancer cells while sparing surrounding healthy tissue. However, despite the treatment’s compelling biological and medical rationale, little is known about the effects of protons on glioblastoma at the cellular level....

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Positive Evaluation of the NOCI Program

This week the results of the mid-term review were received. The funding for the Netherlands Organ-on-Chip Initiative (NOCI) program will be continued for a second term of 5 years. The NOCI program will continue until October 1st 2027.   The midterm review consisted of a Self-evaluation Report and an interview with a panel of experts to evaluate the request for financing of the second part of the program. The Self-evaluation Report was compiled by the consortium after which the report was critically reviewed by our ‘Critical Friends’ Matthias Lutolf (EPFL) and Don Ingber (Wyss) together with the Scientific Advisory Board...

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PSIDER grant BRAINMODEL for research on neurodevelopmental disorders

BRAINMODEL was founded by Matthijs Verhage (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Amsterdam UMC, chairman) and Nael Nadif Kasri (Radboudumc, vice-chairman) and brings partners from 6 knowledge centers in the Netherlands together with social organizations, professional associations and companies. The Vrije Universiteit is the main applicant. The consortium has been awarded a grant of €4M by ZONMW in the context of the Multidisciplinary Consortia Program Pluripotent Stem cells for Inherited Diseases and Embryonic Research (PSIDER) grant call. The main aim of this project is to use iPSC-based analyses to detect aberrant cellular functions in the material of patients with brain disorders and...

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Pieter van Altena will focus on 3D microenvironments for neuropsychiatric disorders

Pieter van Altena recently obtained a MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering with double specialization in High Tech Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at TU Delft. There, he will join the group of Dr. Angelo Accardo as PhD student from December 2021. His research will focus on the design, fabrication and characterization of 3D cell-instructive microenvironments to study the mechanobiology of iPSC-derived neural and glial cells coming from healthy subjects and patients affected by autism spectrum disorders. The PhD trajectory of Pieter is part of a recently granted NWO ENW-M-2 project in collaboration with Vivi Heine from VU Amsterdam. In his free...

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Isabel Tamargo starts PhD project on the microbe-intestine-liver axis in drug metabolism

Isabel Tamargo started as a new PhD candidate under the direct supervision of PIs Prof. Jingyuan Fu and Dr. Sebo Withoff at the Department of Genetics, University of Groningen in October 2021. The name of her project is: “Personalized in-intro model to study the role of the microbe-intestine-liver axis in drug metabolism”. In vitro models to perform individualized drug testing are highly needed to aid personalized medicine. In this project, Isabel will generate liver and gut models in an organ-on-a-chip system derived from hiPSCs. Subsequently, by means of pharmacokinetic assays, the metabolic profile of different drugs, previously selected, whose metabolism...

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Victoria Palasantzas for Liver-on-Chip

PhD student Victoria Palasantzas joined the group of hDMT PIs Prof. Jingyuan Fu and Dr. Sebo Withoff at the Department of Genetics, University of Groningen in October 2021, to work on the liver-on-chip system in a project named: Establishing the molecular mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of short-chain fatty acids in the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. In this project, she aims to develop fatty liver-on-chip disease model system to study the NAFLD/NASH phenotype and the potential beneficial properties of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) for fatty liver disease. The project aims to advance the established liver-on-chip model by complexifying...

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Clementine Boutry starts research on biodegradable materials for scaffolds, electrodes, actuators and wireless circuits for Organ-on-Chip at TU Delft

Clementine Boutry recently joined the ECTM Laboratory in the Department of Microlelectronics at TU Delft as a new Assistant Professor. She will work on biodegradable technologies, more specifically soft biodegradable materials with tailored mechanical, electrical and magnetic properties. They will be used to design scaffolds, integrated electrodes, actuators and wireless circuits, entirely made of biodegradable materials, for organs-on-chip. She received her PhD from ETH Zurich (Switzerland), working on biodegradable conducting polymer composites and their integration into passive resonant circuits for wireless implant applications, under the guidance of Prof. Christofer Hierold. She then worked in industry and joined Philips Research in...

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