Category Archives: News

NWO Open Competition Domain Science – XS grant for Silvia Mihăilă on bioartificial kidney

Silvia Mihăilă (Utrecht University) received an NWO Open Competition Domain Science – XS grant entitled ‘MAKING WAVES: A modeling-driven microfluidic device with wave configurations to evaluate solutes removal for bioartificial kidney applications’ With the loss of kidney function, the removal of unwanted solutes becomes inefficient. Bioartificial kidney (BAK), an extension to current dialysis therapy, aims at using specialized cells to cover hollow fiber membranes as functional units of a device to remove solutes not eliminated by conventional dialysis. By applying a highly multidisciplinary approach, we will use the experimental data and in silico numerical modeling to predict BAK performance. Iteratively,...

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9th hDMT theme group: Kidney-on-Chip

A good start of the New Year! Another new hDMT theme group has been established and will kick-off on March 16th 2023: Kidney-on-Chip. Coordinators are Silvia Mihăilă (chair, Utrecht University) and Jitske Jansen (vice-chair, Erasmus MC). Aim of the Kidney-on-Chip theme group is to bring together hDMT members focusing on kidney disease models, kidney regeneration and kidney in vitro models for drug screening. This working group aims to promote interaction, share knowledge, and provide opportunities for collaboration. By sharing expertise and facilities, this working group will advance the development of functional human kidney organoids (for health and disease). These systems...

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Kick-off meeting hDMT Bone-on-Chip meeting was a real eye-opener

On December 7th 2022 the brand new hDMT Bone-on-Chip theme group meeting kicked off in Amsterdam. After an overview of the challenges and opportunities in the Bone-on-Chip field by the coordinators Nathalie Bravenboer (chair, Amsterdam UMC) and Liliana Moreira Texeira (vice-chair, UTwente) there were inspiring talks of researchers from different hDMT partner organizations. Looking behind the scenes of the many research groups was a real eye-opener for the participants and already led to new collaborations and stronger existing relationships. All in all a useful start of the hDMT Bone-on-Chip community.

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University of Applied Sciences Leiden is first Hogeschool to join hDMT

University of Applied Sciences Leiden is first Hogeschool to join hDMT. By 1 December 2022 the hDMT Consortium has welcomed Hogeschool Leiden as the 16th partner organization. Peter Lindenburg(l) and Walter Zuijderduin are the representatives in the hDMT Consortium Assembly. The Leiden Centre for Applied Bioscience (LCAB) is the research institute of the Faculty of Science & Technology of the University of Applied Sciences Leiden. The LCAB consists of six research groups, including Genome-based Health, Metabolomics, Metagenomics, Bioinformatics, Applied Microbiology and Food, Health & Innovation. Aim is to conduct practice-oriented research in the field of Bioscience. The LCAB contributes to...

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Lively 6th annual meeting of growing hDMT community

The annual hDMT Consortium meeting on November 25th, chaired by Amalia Dolga (University of Groningen) was a great success. The Studio33 conference room in Amersfoort, in the colors of the hDMT logo, was filled with more than 165 enthusiastic hDMT researchers. After a welcome by Christine Mummery, chair of hDMT,  senior scientists gave interesting lectures about several topics, including the development within hDMT of standardized platforms for Organ-on-Chip, multi-Organ-on-Chip platforms to predict pharmacokinetics, metabolism in Organ-on-Chip models, and the challenges and opportunities that will be addressed in the new hDMT Bone-on-Chip group. Young talents presented their latest results in high...

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hDMT welcomes VU Amsterdam as new partner

Per 1 November 2022 VU Amsterdam has joined hDMT as a new partner.The representatives in the hDMT Consortium Assembly are Richard Jaspers and Astrid Bakker. VU Amsterdam boasts 3 faculties, Faculty of Sciences (FS), Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences (FGB) and the Academic Centre of Dentistry of Amsterdam (ACTA), in which Organ‐on‐Chip technology is developed and applied. These faculties host the following labs/departments with expert facilities and expertise: ACTA ‐ Department of Oral Cell Biology; Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences; Faculty of Sciences ‐ Department of Molecular and Computational Toxicology; Faculty of Sciences ‐ Department of Chemistry and...

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Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge 2023

Following the successful first editions in 2021 & 2022, Proefdiervrij will organize a third edition of the Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge from January 2023 until April 2023. During the Venture Challenge, researchers are guided in setting up a venture plan, in which a scientific breakthrough within the life sciences is converted into a solid business case. In doing so, they learn various skills needed to start or further develop a business. In this way, we want to increase and accelerate the impact of non-animal research on the use of laboratory animals. Are you interested? Please click here for more information on...

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Niels Harlaar (LUMC) wins Hugo van Poelgeest Award

This year the Hugo van Poelgeest Award ( € 3000,-) was won by Niels Harlaar (LUMC). During the Toekomstproef event in Beeld & Geluid Den Haag on November 18th he received the award for his work on the development of new human heart models to replace laboratory animals in heart disease research. The winner of the audience award was Valentina Palacio-Castañeda (Radboudumc). In her non-animal research, she uses Organs-on-Chips to study the application of new therapeutic proteins for the treatment of cancer. The third nominee was Victoria de Leeuw, who is working on an important transition to animal-free safety assessment...

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Thesis Jeroen Stein (LUMC): Advanced tools and methods for modeling cardiovascular disease using human pluripotent stem cells

On November 24th 2022 Jeroen Stein successfully defended his thesis, entitled: ‘Advanced tools and methods for modeling cardiovascular disease using human pluripotent stem cells’ at Leiden University. His research was performed under the supervision of Prof. Mummery, Dr. Milena Bellin and Dr. Valeria Orlova. To advance disease modelling and drug discovery leading to new pharmaceutical options for cardiovascular patients, new in vitro models and quantification methods are needed that improve clinical predictivity. For this purpose several approaches have been explored, ranging from novel co-culture methods to functional read-outs for human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs), in order to bring...

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Impressive progress of SMART Organ-on-Chip project

On 23 and 24 November, the first annual consortium meeting of the national collaborative project ‘SMART Organ-on-Chip’ was held in Eindhoven. This was a great in-person gathering of all 10 participating research groups, 25 partnering companies, institutes, and health organizations, and the industrial advisory board. Even though the project is not even one year underway, the PhD students working in the project enthusiastically presented impressive progress. Throughout the whole meeting, there were lively discussions about the technology, biology and applications/implementation, which resulted in new ideas and collaborative approaches; a theme that was high on the agenda was how the project...

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