News

Human organoids hold tremendous potential for biomedical applications. These three-dimensional structures of cultured cells recapitulate important aspects of in vivo organ development and biological function. They provide tractable in vitro models of human physiology and pathology, thereby enabling interventional studies that are difficult or... Read more

Recently a new release of the book Stem Cells: Scientific Facts and Fiction by Christine Mummery, Anja van de Stolpe, Bernard Roelen and Hans Clevers, has been published. The book has updated chapters with new illustrations on Organs-on-Chip and Organoid models for understanding disease mechanisms and testing drugs as well as a general... Read more

In January 2021, George Galaris joined the Metabolic Health Research group at TNO, location Leiden, and the Division of Drug Discovery & Safety at Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) as a post-doctoral researcher. Previously, Galaris performed his PhD studies at Leiden University Medical Centre (Nephrology... Read more

The recording of the Workshop on Microphysiological Systems (MPS): Bridging Human and Animal Research that was held on January 19-20, 2021 is now available for viewing. You can watch the recording here. Read more

Last November, Bi/ond, the Organ-on-Chip startup based in Delft, launched the #OOCtransition initiative to promote and accelerate the development of Organ-on-Chip models with the potential to reduce and replace animal testing. Researchers from all over Europe submitted their abstracts. After a careful selection, the Bi/ond team selected the... Read more

Can we predict beforehand which of the Covid-19 patients will develop critical symptoms? hDMT PI Professor Thomas Hankemeier, together with a diverse consortium of universities, academic hospitals and industrial partners, is looking for answers. The consortium has received a grant of 1 million euros from Top Sector Life Sciences & Health... Read more

The FDA's Alternative Methods Working Group recently published the report Advancing Newe Alternative Methods at FDA. In the report you can read about the activities FDA scientists are undertaking to spur the development of new regulatory approaches that can help improve predictivity - and potentially - replace, reduce or refine animal... Read more

Sertan Sukas has received a personal grant of the NWO Open Competition Domain Science - XS for the project Biochrom: Bio-inspired chromatography column for circulating tumor cell extraction from blood. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cells that originate from tumors, travel in the human circulatory system to eventually spread the... Read more

NWO, domain Applied and Engineering Sciences, has awarded hDMT PI Kim van der Heiden from the Erasmus MC, department Cardiology, a VIDI grant worth 800.000 euro for the research project Defining new imaging biomarkers for stroke by unravelling atherosclerotic cap rupture. For investigating the mechanism of plaque rupture, she will... Read more

Karel Luyben (Rector Magnificus Emeritus of Delft University of Technology) has been elected the first President of the EOSC Association following a nomination supported by Cesaer in response to an open call for candidates. Letters of Endorsements for his nomination were issued by the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and... Read more

Recently the Dutch government has launched the strategy 'Reinforcement of research- and innovation ecosystems' that will support researchers and entrepreneurs to innovate, will help to reinforce existing ecosystems and stimulate new ones. On request of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and... Read more

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and CEN-CENELEC carry out an annual 'foresight on standardisation' action under the Putting Science into Standards (PSIS) initiative. The PSIS initiative identifies emerging science and technology areas that could benefit from standardisation activities to enable innovation... Read more

In 2020 most of the hDMT theme group meetings were held online. During the meetings the number of participants was doubled compared with the physical meetings the year before. During these meetings there were lively discussions that have resulted in new collaborations. The Eye-on-Chip group coordinators invited two key experts for their... Read more

The Netherlands Organ-on-Chip Initiative (NOCI), funded by the NWO/OCW Gravity program, is half way its ten year research program and preparing for its midterm evaluation. The NOCI project focuses on brain, heart and gut on chip and their interactions, using pluripotent stem cells from patients that are grown in a controlled way in the chip... Read more

The transition from single cells to multicellular organisms was a key step in evolution. Researchers from hDMT partners Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam developed a mathematical model that explains how this transition may have come about and published the results in eLife. They suspect cooperating cells may correct each... Read more

A new mathematical model by hDMT PI Roeland Merks, professor of Mathematical Biology and his former PhD candidate Lisanne Rens of Leiden University, explains how body cells get their shapes and what makes them move within a tissue. The model provides fundamental knowledge for applications in tissue engineering, and also for a better... Read more

Lack of experimental human models hinders research on Lassa hemorrhagic fever, a fatal viral disease, and the development of treatment strategies. No safe drug with proven efficacy exists. The team of hDMT PI Alireza Mashaghi of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research of the Leiden University, reports the first chip‐based model for... Read more

Researcher Babette de Jong will start as of January 1st 2021 to work on experimental testing of the mathematical models in the lab of Roeland Merks of the Mathematical Institute of the Leiden University. Until then she is involved as a PhD student in the physics department. PhD student Durjay Pramanik will start working on mathematical... Read more

Many people suffer from a slow heartbeat. The natural pacemaker of the heart - the sinus node - then does not work properly. NWO Research programme XL (previous OC ENW-GROOT) has awarded the project 'Pacing the heart; studying the underlying principles of biological pacemakers' to elucidate the elementary principles and minimal... Read more

Sarah Konze has received a post-doctoral fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to work in the group Glycosylation Disorders in Neurology of hDMT PI Dirk Lefeber at the Radboudumc. She will investigate the role of protein glycosylation in genetic myopathies. She will use patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells to generate... Read more

In a collaborative pilot project between the hDMT partners Twente University and Radboudumc, Robert Passier (Universtity of Twente, on the left) and Dirk Lefeber (Radboudumc, on the right) will investigate the metabolism of sugars and other pathways of central carbon metabolism in 2D cardiomyocytes and 3D engineered heart tissue in Heart-on-Chip... Read more

hDMT partners Erasmus MC and Maastricht University received a grant from the ZonMW COVID-19 Programma for the project Employing a physiological microfluidic lung bioreactor to improve understanding of SARS-CoV-2 biology and testing of therapeutics.The two-year project started on September 1th, 2020 and is led by Robbert Rottier (Erasmus MC) ... Read more

A European consortium of 11 partners has received funding from the European Union (H2020 - DT-NMBP-23-2020) to develop a Tumor-Lymph Node-on-Chip. The lymphatic system and lymph nodes (LNs) are an integral part of our adaptive immune system and many tumors exploit lymphatic vessels to spread and colonize downstream LNs. Tumor-LN-oC... Read more

In the Dutch popular science magazine KIJK hDMT Managing Director Janny van den Eijnden - van Raaij was interviewed for an article about animal free research and the role of Organ-on-Chips. The article 'Goed nieuws voor de labrat' in KIJK edition12/2020 starts as follows: Good news for the lab rat In scientific and... Read more

Holland High Tech of the Top Sector High Tech Systems and Materials (HTSM) has recently presented the Roadmap Nanotechnology in which Organ-on-Chip technology and hDMT take a prominent place in the development of this key technology in the Netherlands. Nanotechnology is considered a key technology. The Roadmap Nanotechnology (pdf) describes... Read more