News

The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and the European Organ-on-Chip Society (EUROoCS) announced Stem Cell Reports, the ISSCR's online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal, will serve as the "home" journal for EUROoCS member publications that focus on the use and application of stem cells. This alliance... Read more

The 2nd edition of the Annual EUROoCS (European Organ-on-Chip Society) Conference was very different from the one held before. Instead of sunny summer days in Uppsala, Sweden, COVID-19 put EUROoCS 2020 into our own offices and homes. EUROoCS 2020 went virtual and in a remarkably short space of time. The organizing committee transformed the... Read more

The Microsystems group of hDMT PI Jaap den Toonder welcomes Mohammad Jouybar as a PhD candidate. The Cancer-on-Chip research group of Microsystems at the Eindhoven University of Technology tries to recapitulate the cancer microenvironment on microfluidic devices, and effectively study the cancer metastasis on them. Jouybar is starting to work... Read more

Last June 2020, the ECSEL Joint Undertaking Moore4Medical kicked off with the overarching objective to accelerate innovation in electronic medical devices. Led by Philips and masterminded by professor Ronald Dekker (Philips Research, and ECTM group TU Delft), Moore4Medical will run for three years and will address emerging medical... Read more

On 25 and 26 August 2020, the 11th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences organized two 1.5 h webinars on 3Rs in COVID-19 research. On both days, several excellent presentations highlighted innovative model systems to study COVID-19, and also discussed new strategies for the development of vaccines, therapeutics and... Read more

Prof. Dr. Pieter Hiemstra and Dr. Anne van der Does of the Pulmonary Diseases Department of Leiden University Medical Centre, a hDMT partner, received a grant of 500,000 euros from ZonMw and the Stichting Proefdiervrij. The money will be used to research the pulmonary epithelium at Covid-19 and to develop a Fibrosis Lung-on-Chip. The... Read more

In the past few weeks the organizers of 11th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences have asked several people to answer the question: "Is there a role for the 3Rs in COVID-19 research?". In the recent newsletter 5, hDMT PI Katja Wolthers and hDMT chair Christine Mummery answered the question. Katja... Read more

During the online cluster meeting 'Components' organized by FHI, Industrial Electronics on Wednesday 2 September 2020, Dr Janny van den Eijnden-van Raaij, Managing director hDMT (Dutch Organ-on-Chip Consortium) will take you on a journey through the developments of Organ-op-Chip technology. In this cluster, members of FHI discuss market... Read more

The ECSEL Joint Undertaking Moore4Medical kicked off last June 2020 with the overarching objective to accelerate innovation in electronic medical devices. Moore4Medical is masterminded by hDMT PI professor Ronald Dekker (Philips Research & ECTM) and sees important involvement and vast opportunities for TU Delft's Microelectronics... Read more

During the 2nd edition of the Annual EUROoCS (European Organ-on-Chip Society) Conference on 8th and 9th of July (due to COVID-19 held online) prizes were awarded for the Best Presentation Young Investigator Awards, the Best Presentation Senior Investigator Award and the Best Poster Awards. Dutch hDMT researcher Joram Mooiweer from the University... Read more

EUROoCS 2021 Next year the EUROoCS conference will take place in Uppsala in Sweden on 1st and 2nd of July 2021. The conference chair is Maria Tenje from Uppsala University. Let's hope that by that time the COVID-19 pandemic is over. 1 and 2 July 2021 Please save the date! Maria Tenje (Uppsala University) Conference... Read more

CAAT and several other organizations are planning a World Conference on Microphysiological Systems (MPS) to be held in Baltimore/DC (USA) in the Fall 2021. Please share with them your input via https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DW5M3KQ. Thank you for your help! Read more

The NC3Rs is currently running a survey targeted to end-users of organ-on-a-chip technology. The aim of the survey is to gather information on the current use and application of the technology, provide insight into the impacts on the 3Rs and to help inform the NC3Rs' future strategy in this area. If you are currently using, considering... Read more

hDMT chair Christine Mummery of Leiden University Medical Center is the new president of the ISSCR Board of Directors. Mummery's term of office leading the Society has started as of 1 July 2020. She will serve as ISSCR president for one year, succeeding Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes, USA. "I am thrilled to take on this... Read more

On 25 and 26 August 2020 at 3 PM CET, the 11th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Science will organize two 1.5 h webinars on 3Rs in COVID-19 research. On both days, several excellent presentations will highlight innovative model systems to study COVID-19, and will also discuss new strategies for the development of... Read more

In U-Today, an independent journalistic medium at the University of Twente (UT), hDMT PI Andries van der Meer talks about plans to use Organ-on-Chips for covid-19 research, together with researchers from Leiden, among others. Their connections within the hDMT consortium inspired them to work together on this new challenge. Does the old... Read more

Not only the lungs but in some cases also the heart of a patient can be seriously damaged by COVID-19. The cause of this is still unclear. By exposing heart tissue on an 'organ-on-chip' to both the virus and the medication used, fast and personalized evaluation of the causes is possible, including possible remedies. The TechMed... Read more

hDMT PI Regina Luttge coordinates CONNECT, a Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) project, which aims at providing better treatment for neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. In this regard, she was interviewed on the integration of the principles of microfluidics, tissue engineering and... Read more

NanoNextNL has published an English version of the manifesto NanoVision 2030 containing an additional chapter on cooperation in research in the current corona era. Nanovision 2030 is a multi-year plan for the knowledge and innovation agenda around the key enabling technology, nanotechnology, for solving societal challenges. This aligns with... Read more

The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) will start construction this year of the largest non-profit stem cell and gene therapy facility in the Netherlands, and one of the largest facilities in Europe. NECSTGEN - the Netherlands Center for the Clinical Advancement of Stem Cell and Gene Therapies - will support research in the area... Read more

Researchers from Leiden University Medical Center (group of hDMT PI Christine Mummery, Milena Bellin and Valeria Orlova) developed a microphysiological system that behaves as a "mini-heart" using cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and cardiac fibroblasts all derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). These mini-hearts... Read more

Researchers from the University of Twente (group of hDMT PI Severine Le Gac) and Radboudumc (group of Wouter Verdurmen) in Nijmegen, created an easy-to-fabricate microfluidic device that recapitulates essential features of the tumor environment including hypoxia and an acidic tumor microenvironment. In particular, the device mimics tumor... Read more

hDMT PI Angelo Accardo of the Department of Precision and Microsystems Engineering (TU Delft) receives, together with Mohammad Mirzaali of the Department of Biomechanical Engineering (TU Delft), the 3mE Cohesion Grant of 200 k€ from Sectorplan funding. Current orthopaedic implants suffer from insufficient osseointegration rate in ageing... Read more

Ahmed Sharaf recently joined the group of hDMT PI Angelo Accardo, Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, Department of Precision and Microsystems Engineering (PME). He is going to work on Light-assisted 3D manufacturing of neuronal microenvironments. The continuous evolution of additive manufacturing technologies opened a new... Read more

Scientists in Leiden are looking for signals in blood samples to predict whether patients will develop serious COVID-19 symptoms or not. Based on that knowledge, they will be able to propose targeted therapies to prevent serious symptoms. They hope to come up with the first results within the week. Traces of diseases in the body ... Read more