news 2019

Antwerp and Ghent scientists discover new drug for deadly disease. Antwerp and Ghent scientists have discovered a new drug against African 'sleeping sickness'. "This disease seems to be on its way out, but it is still very useful to have a new drug to fall back on, because we can't rule out another sudden upswing ", says Prof. Guy Caljon (UAntwerp).

Wednesday 18 December saw the official inauguration of the Antwerp Biobank, a joint UZA/UAntwerp project. The biobank is invaluable in terms of scientific research and medical progress. The brand-new Antwerp Biobank processes and stores a wide range of high-quality human bodily material. This may be what's known as residual material, which is any bodily material that remains after a diagnostic examination or medical procedure, but most samples have been prospectively collected for research purposes.

In brief  (20 seconds of reading) : Since 2004, Sophie Lucas, a researcher at the UCLouvain de Duve Institute, has been studying the immune responses that cancer patients can develop against their own tumour She is currently testing a new anti-cancer drug that would strengthen such immune responses This research won the prestigious Academy of Medicine GSK Award , which recognises work in the fields of vaccinology and immunology Sophie Lucas , a researcher at the UCLouvain de Duve Institute , studies the immune responses that cancer patients can develop against their own tumour.

A Europe-wide study conducted over three flu seasons finds that the antiviral drug Tamiflu can help people recover from flu-like illness about one-day sooner on average. Published today in The Lancet, the European Commission-funded 'ALIC4E' study was led by the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Utrecht (The Netherlands).

Researchers from VIB-Ghent Universitiy Center for Medical Biotechnology and other collaborators, developed a novel approach to better understand a basic defense mechanism of our immune system. Central is ISG15, a small protein with a role in the immune system. With the newly developed method, scientists can now identify and study proteins tagged with ISG15, allowing them to unravel its many functions in fighting disease, potentially leading to novel antimicrobial drugs.

Why do some patients with Crohn's disease still suffer from abdominal pain, even when their treatment is successful? With funding from the Helmsley Charitable Trust, researchers from Belgium and Sweden will spend the next three years examining the underlying mechanisms of this pain. Approximately 3 out of 1000 people have Crohn's disease, which is characterised by intestinal inflammation.

For the first time ever, researchers from KU Leuven have carried out tests on human brains in the area that is responsible for our vision. This research method is unique. The results have been published in PLOS Biology . To gain a better understanding of the human brain, researchers can rely on several methods.

Immunologist Johan Van Weyenbergh (KU Leuven) and his Belgian-Brazilian colleagues have shown that a drug used to fight arthritis also stops the process that allows the tuberculosis bacillus to infect and hijack blood stem cells. Tuberculosis (TB) may affect any part of the body, but the spread of the disease might start in the bone marrow.

Our brain cells, and more specifically the channel proteins in the cell wall, need lipids - or fat - to function properly. These are the findings of an international study led by the Laboratory of Structural Neurobiology at KU Leuven. The researchers identified the structure of these proteins in the presence of a lipid molecule at the atomic level for the first time.

Research at KU Leuven suggests a cause for the neurodevelopmental disturbances experienced by a third of patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The discovery suggests possible underlying mechanisms of these problems, which appear targetable by therapeutic interventions in a cellular model. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is an inherited neuromuscular disorder in which the muscles, including the heart and respiratory muscles, progressively become weaker.

Researchers at KU Leuven have developed a new research model to grow and study the human variant of the norovirus. The virus could thus far only be studied through a variant that occurs in mice. The new model, that is described in the journal PLOS Pathogens, should allow researchers to develop a treatment for stomach flu.

Researchers at KU Leuven have developed a technique to make sheep produce new antibodies simply by injecting the DNA building blocks. This approach is much cheaper and more efficient than producing antibodies industrially and administering them afterwards. The study in animals with a similar size as humans brings us a step closer to the clinical use of antibody gene therapy.

An international study led by Professor Jan Staessen and Professor Zhen-Yu Zhang has shown that 24-hour blood pressure monitoring, including when the patient is asleep, has the highest predictive accuracy for cardiovascular diseases. An international consortium followed 11,135 individuals for up to 14 years.

Biomedical researchers at KU Leuven have found a new way to study endometrial diseases such as endometriosis and cancer. They were able to grow three-dimensional cell structures from diseased tissue of patients. The biobank can be used to unravel the disorders and test drugs. Diseases of the endometrium are an important cause of infertility.

Chemotherapy attacks cancer cells but also healthy cells. In children, it often causes irreversible damage that can impact their adult lives. UCLouvain researcher Anabelle Decottignies has found a possible strategy for killing cancer cells, especially in children, without affecting healthy cells , as reported in the scientific journal Molecular Cell .

Patrice Cani, professor at UCLouvain, and his team conducted the first pilot study in humans to observe the impact of the bacteria Akkermansia (ingestion for 3 months), particularly on the reduction of cardiovascular risk factors. The results are published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine .

A team of researchers led by KU Leuven virologist Johan Neyts have discovered a new feature of so-called picornaviruses that may allow for the development of new antiviral medications for the common cold, polio, and other illnesses. Picornaviruses include rhinoviruses and enteroviruses. Rhinoviruses cause millions of cases of upper respiratory infections ("colds") yearly and contribute to asthma, and enteroviruses are responsible for millions of infections including cases such as meningitis, encephalitis and polio.

A collaborative study between the University of Antwerp and McGill University allows PET scanning on animals without the use of anesthesia. Have you ever spent half an hour trying to take the best photo of your pets but they won't stay still in the perfect angle? This is also true for small animal imaging research using positron emission tomography (PET).

Imec, UZ Leuven, KU Leuven, Ghent University, Agilent, Western Digital and BlueBee develop unique hybrid cloud platform for fast and cost-efficient whole genome sequencing and analysis. Today, on the occasion of the international DNA day, imec, a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, and its partners revealed their Genome Analytics Platform (GAP) platform, a unique platform that can perform a full genome analysis of 48 samples in only 48 hours and at an acceptable cost.

What happens inside a cell when it is activated, changing, or responding to variations in its environment? Researchers from the VIB-Ghent University Center for Inflammation Research have developed a map of how to best model these cellular dynamics. Their work not only highlights the outstanding challenges of tracking cells throughout their growth and lifetime, but also pioneers new ways of evaluating computational biology methods that aim to do this.