Category Archives: News

ERC Advanced Grant for Carlijn Bouten

Carlijn Bouten (TU/e) received an ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euro grant along with an additional half a million euros for equipment for her project RE-ALIGN: restoring anisotropy in living tissues ‘in situ’. Living heart muscle The research focuses on repair in the living heart. The goal is to eventually be able to repair cardiac tissue exclusively using the self-organizing capacity of the tissue. “Once I have fully explored this capacity, I then aim to use ultrasound to encourage tissue to organize itself. Previous research has shown this to be possible, but those studies did not take place in...

Read more

NWO-XS grant for Angelo Accardo

Angelo Accardo (TU Delft) received a NWO-XS grant (€ 50000) for the project: Unravelling neuronal growth cone mechanobiology via sub-micrometric fabrication and super-resolution microscopy Comparing the growth of healthy and diseased neurons is fundamental to understand and tackle neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). The growth cone (GC) is a mechanosensitive structure, which probes the surrounding environment and connects neurons. To date, the GC has mainly been studied by employing unrealistic 2D bulky “petri-dish” configurations unable to mimic the brain microenvironment. We will pioneer a reproducible 3D GC model by combining 3D printed sub-micrometric biomaterials, able to simulate the...

Read more

Daphne Panocha starts PhD project on the development of immunocompetent human Lymph Node-on-Chip

PhD student Daphne Panocha joined the group of Prof.dr. Reina Mebius and Prof.dr. Sue Gibbs at the department of Molecular Cell Biology & Immunology, Amsterdam UMC in May 2022. Her research is focused on the development of a immunocompetent Human Lymph Node-on-Chip model with integrated lymphatics as a part of the LymphChip consortium.

Read more

Farhad Sanaei starts research on Bone-on-Chip systems at RadboudUMC

Farhad Sanaei joined the group of Regenerative Biomaterials at the Department of Dentistry of Radboud University Medical Center as of 1 May 2022. Farhad has obtained a BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from Urmia University of Technology (Iran) and a MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering from Polytechnic University of Milan (Italy). Farhad will carry out his PhD research under supervision of Dr. Mani Diba to develop bone-on-chip models which recapitulate the spatial heterogeneity of cells in bone by means of bioprinting. This project is part of the BoneChipPredict Hypatia Project of Radboud University Medical Center, which aims to combine bottom-up...

Read more

Germaine Aalderink joins the LymphChip consortium

Germaine Aalderink joined the group of Hans Bouwmeester at Wageningen University as PhD student from May 1st 2022. During her PhD, she will develop an in vitro microfluidic model with intestinal and lymphatic endothelial cells as part of the LymphChip consortium. This model will be used to simulate nutrient and drug transport in the intestine.

Read more

Your own cells as medicine!

  hDMT is represented at the ‘Publieksdag Leiden’ in the context of ‘Leiden, City of Science’ on 28 May 2022. This day has been organized by the Dutch Research agenda, route Regenerative Medicine. Universities and companies from the whole country will present the latest developments in the field of regenerative medicine. Researchers from different hDMT partners will inform the public about the role and importance of Organs-on-Chips in drug development, personalized medicine, and reduction of animal experiments. On the basis of four Organ-on-Chip models (gut, liver, vessels and heart) they will show how these are designed and fabricated, what is...

Read more

Sabeth Verpoorte and Pim de Haan authors of a guide on ‘organ-on-a-chip’.

An invited review co-authored by Prof. Sabeth Verpoorte and postdoc Pim de Haan (Pharmaceutical Analysis, University of Groningen) appeared in Nature Reviews Methods Primers on May 12, 2022. Entitled “Guide to the organ-on-a-chip”, this paper was written as a collaborative effort by an international team of organ-on-a-chip experts put together by Verpoorte. Pim de Haan is a shared first author of this work. Organs-on-chips are miniature versions of human tissues or organs that are interconnected with hair-fine microfluidic channels to supply them with growth medium and to take samples for analysis. They can be used to unravel and better understand...

Read more

Young TPI launched

The Young Transition Animal-free Innovation (Young TPI) was officially launched last month and is now welcoming new members. Young TPI is a dynamic and engaging network composed of students, PhDs and young professionals focusing on the transition towards animal-free innovations (for example Organ-on-Chips and microphysiological systems). The network is connected and supported by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture. The mission of Young TPI is to contribute to the acceleration of the transition to innovations without laboratory animals by providing open-minded input and raising awareness of animal-free options among young professionals, PhDs and students. Young people have the opportunity to work animal-free from...

Read more

Practical models for flow research in the smallest blood vessels

On Tuesday, April 12th, 2022 Andreas Pollet successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled ‘In vitro models for investigating vascular flow: A toolbox for recreating the vasculature on chip’ at Eindhoven University of Technology (supervisors Jaap den Toonder and Massimo Mischi). Andreas explains the context and outcome of his research: ‘About one in two men and one in three women will develop cancer in their lifetime. Successfully combatting cancer requires imaging, treatment and monitoring of the tumour. Recently, a promising method has been introduced to visualise the smallest blood vessels in and around tumours. This is done by injecting small air...

Read more

Next generation EUROoCS travel awards for students

The European Organ-on-Chip Society offers 10 travel grants to highly motivated students that are co-authors of accepted abstracts for the EUROoCS 2022 conference in Grenoble (France) on 4 and 5 July this year. The travel award, in the value of 150 euros, will support young researchers to participate in the conference. Application criteria are (i) to be graduate (BSc / first cycle completed, (ii) registered as a Master student and (iii) be a co-author of a submitted abstract. Applicants should send the following documents to EUROoCS-2022-nextGen@cea.fr mentioning ‘Next generation EUROoCS travel award’ as subject: Proof of graduate and student status from the...

Read more