News

hDMT contributed to a booklet of the Dutch Transition Programme for animal-free Innovations (TPI) entitled '26x better and faster without the use of animals' on Dutch start-ups and scale-ups involved in the transition in the Netherlands. The booklet contains 26 positive stories and examples of producers of animal-free testing... Read more

From the 27th till the 29th of November, the Dutch Transition Programme for animal-free Innovations (TPI) organised the international Pioneer-2-Policymaker conference in Utrecht. The goal was to present the Dutch way of accelerating this transition and to instigate a true dialogue between researchers, regulators and developers. The Dutch... Read more

The European Research Council has awarded hDMT PI Albert van den Berg of the University of Twente, an ERC Proof of Concept grant for furthering standardisation in organ-on-chip infrastructure. Proof of Concept grants, worth €150,000 each, aim to help ERC grantees to explore the innovation potential of their scientific discoveries and bring... Read more

Verena Schwach, researcher at the group of hDMT PI Robert Passier (University of Twente), can start with her research to improved treatment of cardiac arrhythmia. In collaboration with the Dutch Heart Foundation, Verena started a crowdfunding campaign in October to raise enough money to start the research. On 8th December 2019 it was announced... Read more

MinacNed and NanoNextNL have developed a vision for the contribution of nanotechnology, a key technology for the Netherlands in which science and industry work together. The manifesto makes clear which solutions within current domains, such as health, safety, sustainable energy, agriculture and food, require a contribution from nanotechnology. ... Read more

Animal-free innovation becomes easier when you do it together with patients, doctors, researchers, financiers, health professionals and policy makers. That is what happens during a helpathon. A helpathon is an innovation protocol: during two days an interdisciplinary team looks for animal-free ways to answer a research question. 'Within... Read more

Paul Krijnen (project leader) and hDMT PI Sue Gibbs (foto) of the Amsterdam UMC and Magda Ulrich (Association of Dutch Burn Centres) received a four-year grant from TKI-LSH Health Holland for their project NETosis in burn-induced microvascular thrombosis in the skin and wound deepening: a causative factor, biomarker and therapeutic target. In... Read more

The recently granted Moore4Medical project intends to accelerate innovation in electronic and microfabricated devices for a number of emerging medical domains. In Moore4Medical 68 partners from 13 countries participate. This three-year project has a budget of €68M and will start in June 2020. Too often promising medical device... Read more

New laboratory techniques can help solve the shortage of donor liver, argues hDMT PI professor Luc van der Laan in the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, on the occasion of his oration 'Heal the liver'. Mini livers He also tells about building liver tissue in a petri dish. In this way, scientists can mimic the complete liver... Read more

The initiative of the University of Twente, a partner of hDMT, for an open standard 'Translational Organ-on-Chip Platform (TOP)' won the Philips Innovation Services 'Start-up of the Year Award' at the International MicroNano Conference 2019 in Utrecht (NL) Berend van Meer (UTwente, LUMC) pitched the platform technology that... Read more

Brain cells of people with intellectual disabilities or certain developmental disorders communicate differently than brain cells of people without those disorders. Researchers at the Radboudumc have discovered this by comparing the electrical brain waves of both groups. Their findings were recently published in Nature Communications and... Read more

The TURBO programme of the Radboudumc and the University of Twente has awarded Michel van Putten (UTwente) and Nael Nadif Kasri (Radboudumc) for their technical-medical research proposal 'EEG in-a-dish: towards PRecisIoN mediCine for EpilepSy (PRINCES).' Epilepsy or epileptic seizures give an abnormal electrophysiological picture,... Read more

The TURBO programme of the Radboudumc and the University of Twente has awarded Andries van der Meer (UT) and Frans Russel (Radboudumc) for their technical-medical research proposal 'Modulation of endothelial urate toxicity by urate transporters as a new personalized prevention strategy for atherosclerosis.' Foto credits: Blood... Read more

PhD candidate Milica Dostanic of the Electronic Components, Technology and Materials group (ECTM) of Delft University of Technology, partner of hDMT, won the Best Poster Award at this year's International MicroNano Conference in Utrecht (NL) with her poster titled "A miniaturized EHT platform for contractile tissue... Read more

How can we better understand the process of fertilization in mammals? Thanks to a new member of the Organs-on-Chip family, Dr Bart Gadella and his colleagues at the faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Utrecht University are able to study fertilization and reproduction. They developed an Oviduct-on-Chip that enables them to use cow gametes obtained... Read more

Reducing the number of cardiac arrests, brain infarcts and heart failure and preventing them from occurring in the future as much as possible, that is the aim of the study 'Growing hearts on a chip'. In order to obtain research funding, postdoc Verena Schwach, of the group of hDMT PI Robert Passier of the University of Twente, has... Read more

Just before the severe typhoon Hagibis hit Tokyo, over 1200 companies and research organizations from 34 countries gathered at Pacifico Yokohama in Japan from 9-11 October 2019. Among the participants were hDMT, Leiden University Medical Center, TNO, Mimetas and several other companies from the Netherlands. In addition to exhibitions and... Read more

Health.E aims to accelerate innovation in medical devices and systems by stimulating the development of open technology platforms and standards, thereby moving away from the inflexible and costly point solutions that presently dominate electronic medical device manufacturing. Open technology platforms, supported by roadmaps, will generate the... Read more

One of the building blocks of the Organ-on-Chip roadmap is 'Standardization'. Lack of standardization, automation and inter-chip incompatibility is limiting End Users in adopting Organ-on-Chip (OoC) solutions. Much like all computer equipment interfaces through a Universal Serial Bus (USB), biologist should be able to use chips from... Read more

Parkinson's disease causes brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine to die. But where does the disease start? Evidence suggests that a failure of the brain's immune system may be the root cause of the disease. hDMT researcher Amalia Dolga, Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen's Department of... Read more

On Monday 14 October 2019, Professor Christine Mummery gave the annual John Burdon Sanderson Lecture, this year entitled 'Cardiovascular diseases and drugs: hiPSC models moving forward'. The annual lecture is held in honour of John Burdon Sanderson, the University of Oxford's first Waynflete Professor of Physiology, after whom... Read more

During the 46th Annual ESAO (European Society for Artificial Organs) Congress on 'Smartificial Devices for our Future' in Hannover from 3-7 September 2019 Organ-on-Chip was introduced as a new topic in the field of the European Society for Artificial Organs. The symposium EUROoCS@ESAO was a joint effort of EUROoCS and ESAO to... Read more

Giulia Campostrini from the Department of Anatomy and Embryology has been awarded an Individual Fellowship from the Horizon2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions programme. Cardiomyocytes Campostrini works in the group of Prof. Christine Mummery on cardiomyocytes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). "These cells are a... Read more

Prof. dr. Hans Clevers wins the Keio Medical Science Prize 2019 for his groundbreaking work on stem cells and organoids. The Keio University in Japan annually awards this prize. Clevers receives the award for his research into a molecular process named the Wnt pathway. The process plays a crucial role in the development of stem cells and... Read more

At the annual Science Open Day, Sunday October 6th at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), Laura Windt - PhD student in Prof. Dr. Christine Mummery's lab - held a talk on a potential solution to that question: Organ-on-Chip containing personalized stem cells. Windt explained how Organ-on-Chip research is step-by-step beginning... Read more