Category Archives: News

EUROoCS co-organizes the MPS World Summit 2023

EUROoCS teams up with the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT), supported by more than 40 organizations, to organize the Microphysiological Systems World Summit in Berlin from 26-30 June 2023. So in 2023, the MPS World Summit will be held in lieu of a separate EUROoCS Annual Meeting. The EUROoCS Board is looking forward to meeting all members in Berlin! EUROoCS Board members are contributing to the scientific program of the MPS World Summit and are organizing multiple satellite sessions. In addition, they help in fundraising and are members of the hosting committee and scientific advisory board....

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UMD-Catalyst grant for VLCADD research

Signe Mosegaard and Riekelt Houtkooper, Laboratory Genetic Metabolic Diseases, Amsterdam UMC, received a Catalyst grant (€15.000) from United for Metabolic Diseases and Metakids, to develop prime-edited isogenic control lines and skeletal muscle cells derived from hiPSC with very long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (VLCADD). Title project: ‘Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC) derived muscle models to investigate pathophysiological mechanisms in very long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (VLCADD)’ The project is a collaboration with Pim Pijnappel, Erasmus MC, Sabine Fuchs, UMC Utrecht and Anke Tijsen, Department of Experimental Cardiology, Amsterdam UMC. Read more about the project on the UMD website Or have a look...

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EUROoCS 2022 awards for hDMT researchers

The EUROoCS 2022 conference, with more than 500 attendants, was a success thanks to many people who made this possible.The WTC in Grenoble was a beehive of scientists, companies and regulators, flying in and out of the different rooms to listen to interesting talks, discuss results on the posters and enjoy the delicious French food. The dinner in the Stade des Alpes was a very special experience.During these two days it really felt like one big international family, with members of various ages working towards the same goal: to move the Organ-on-Chip technology forward. Congratulations to all 20 prize winners,...

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New hDMT theme group: Bone-on-Chip

On December 7 this year the kick-off meeting will take place of a brand new hDMT theme group: Bone-on-Chip. Coordinators are Nathalie Bravenboer (Amsterdam UMC) and Liliana Moreira-Texeira Leijten (UTwente). The purpose of the theme group on Bone-on-Chip is to promote interaction, share knowledge, and provide opportunities for collaboration. Bundling of facilities and disciplines will help to develop human bone organoids for both trabecular and cortical bone including osteoblasts, osteocytes and osteoclasts but also preferably vessel formation, mimicking healthy as well as diseased (genetic or (chronically) inflamed) bone and bone marrow compartments. Such Bone-on-Chip models can be used as human...

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FDA Modernization Act 2.0 passes U.S. Senate

On Thursday, September 29, 2022 Senate Bill 5002, ‘FDA Modernization Act 2.0’ was both introduced in the Senate and passed by unanimous consent. The Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (FFDCA) of 1938 mandated that all new drugs be tested in animals to protect patients from unknown toxicity. New technologies have now come to the point that they can often better protect society against unforeseen toxic effects of new medicines than animal testing. Animal models have been essential in the development of all kinds of medicines. But now it is known that a large proportion of the drugs that are...

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Thesis Renata Baptista Vieira de Sá (University Utrecht): Repeat expansions in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; Lessons from patient-derived models

On October 20th 2022 Renata Baptista Vieira de Sá successfully defended her thesis ‘Repeat expansions in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; Lessons from patient-derived models’ at University Utrecht. Her research was performed under the supervision of Prof Pasterkamp and Prof van den Berg. Early descriptions of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) date back to 1824 but the term was only coined in 1874 by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. ALS is a neurodegenerative motor neuron disease (MND) with similar incidence and prevalence across the globe. In Europe the estimated incidence is 1,75 to 3 people per 100 000 and the prevalence 10-12 per...

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Milica Dostanic continues Heart-on-Chip research as postdoc in Leiden

Recruited from TU Delft as joint postdoc with Leiden on the Netherlands Organ-on-Chip Initiative (NOCI) program Milica Dostanic continues her research on miniaturised Engineered Heart Tissues (EHTs). In the group of Christine Mummery (LUMC) she will focus on optimizing cell ratios for the heart (cardiomyocytes, fibroblasts), optimizing pillar flexibility and developing technologies and methods to study cardiac fibrosis.

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Ruben van Helden business developer Organ-on-Chip for reNEW at LUMC

Ruben van Helden has been appointed as business developer Organ-on-Chip for the Novo Nordisk project reNEW at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). This includes facilitating access to Organ-on-Chip technology, specifically the biological aspects/cells; developing courses; making contacts with companies; organizing demo’s and hosting biotech/tech demo’s.

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Lisa-Lee Brüske joins Body Barriers project

In September 2022 Lisa-Lee Brüske joined the group of Prof. Sue Gibbs and Prof. Elga de Vries as a PhD student in the Oral Cell Biology department at ACTA and the Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology department at Amsterdam UMC. Lisa-Lee is a dentist with a Master in Regenerative Dentistry from King’s College London where she worked with iPSC-derived pancreas organoids to study the role of DLK1 during β-cell differentiation. During her PhD she will be working on the Body Barriers project focusing on the development of an oral mucosa-blood-brain organ-on-chip platform for the safety testing of medical devices.

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Suzanne Timmermans starts research at TU Eindhoven on a Brain-on-Chip model for Parkinson’s disease.

Suzanne Timmermans joined the Neuro Nanoscale Engineering group of Regina Luttge at Eindhoven University of Technology as a Postdoc as of July 1st 2022. She received her M.Sc. in Molecular Life Sciences from Radboud University in 2016 and obtained a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry from Eindhoven University of Technology in 2022. Her Postdoc research will focus on developing and validating a Brain-on-Chip model that allows for single-cell read-outs. This project is part of the CONNECT project, which aims to develop an innovative technology based on neuronal networks-on-chip that enables the modeling of the connectivity between the central nervous...

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