Latest News •
Vps37a regulates hepatic glucose production by controlling glucagon receptor localization to endosomes
Revathi Sekar, Karsten Motzler, Yun Kwon, Aaron Novikoff, Julia Jülg, Bahar Najafi, Surui Wang, Anna-Luisa Warnke, Susanne Seitz, Daniela Hass, Sofiya Gancheva, Sabine Kahl, Bin Yang, Brian Finan, Kathrin Schwarz, Juergen G Okun, Michael Roden, Matthias Blüher, Timo D Müller, [read more…]
Loss of hepatic SMLR1 causes hepatosteatosis and protects against atherosclerosis due to decreased hepatic VLDL secretion
Willemien van Zwol, Antoine Rimbert, Justina C. Wolters, Marieke Smit, Vincent W. Bloks, Niels J. Kloosterhuis, Nicolette C. A. Huijkman, Mirjam H. Koster, Umesh Tharehalli, Simon M. de Neck, Colin Bournez, Marceline M. Fuh, Jeroen Kuipers, Sujith Rajan, Alain de [read more…]
About Metabolic Syndrom •
Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a collection of pathological conditions that include abdominal obesity, increased blood pressure, insulin resistance and increased blood glucose and lipids. MetS is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes (T2D), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Combined, these cardio-metabolic diseases form a heavy burden on our society and health care system. Clearly, increasing our knowledge on the molecular mechanisms contributing to the maintenance of metabolic homeostasis will provide tools to improve prognosis, diagnosis and ultimately treatment of patients with cardio-metabolic diseases.
About Metabolic Syndrom •
Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a collection of pathological conditions that include abdominal obesity, increased blood pressure, insulin resistance and increased blood glucose and lipids. MetS is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes (T2D), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Combined, these cardio-metabolic diseases form a heavy burden on our society and health care system. Clearly, increasing our knowledge on the molecular mechanisms contributing to the maintenance of metabolic homeostasis will provide tools to improve prognosis, diagnosis and ultimately treatment of patients with cardio-metabolic diseases.
Mission & Ambition •
It is the ambition of EndoConnect to bring top scientists and industrial partners from different European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, UK, Finland, Spain, Switzerland) together to train PhD students in interdisciplinary research, with the focus on translating key findings from cellular and animal models to patients with cardio-metabolic diseases.
EndoConnect will provide an international training program for PhD students to acquire knowledge and state-of-the-art scientific, technical, and transferable skills to connect molecular and cell biology research with physiology and biomedical research towards translation. This training will significantly increase the career perspectives of PhDs and allow them to become the future leaders in this emerging interdisciplinary field, both in a scientific and societal manner.
Work Packages •
Our Team •
Principal investigators & management
Bart van de Sluis
Heleen van den Heuvel
Pete Cullen
Judith Klumperman
Anja Zeigerer
Jörg Heeren
Jan Albert Kuivenhoven
Albert Pol
Pablo Sáez
Helen Boyd
Kevin Moreau
Elina Ikonen
Noam Zelcer
Alain de Bruin
Marta Bosch
Raymond Schiffelers
PhD students
Shrestha Shaw
Rebeka Butkovic
Camilla Ruffilli
Matteo Tantucci
Klevis Ndoj
Carmen Paredes Yubero
Gyana Lipsa Parida
Joël Tissink
Orsolya Farkas
Ankia Visser
Kim Hurkmans
David McGrath
Alejandra Puentes
Haoran Li
Markus Barbosa
Partners
The local PI, Prof dr Noam Zelcer leads an independent research group in the Department of Medical Biochemistry of the AMC (5 PhDs, 3 Postdoc, and 3 technician) and is a holder of an ERC Consolidator grant, an NWO Vici grant, and is an Established Investigator of the Dutch Heart Society. He puts great emphasize on mentoring his trainees and facilitating their growth towards scientific independence.
Helen Boyd is a biochemist and has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 25 years. This has involved working as a laboratory scientist, a scientific team leader and more recently in business planning and operations. Helen has supervised a number of PhD students, post-doctoral scientists and has published over 20 peer review papers.
Kevin Moreau is the PROTAC safety leader at AstraZeneca. Before joining AstraZeneca, Kevin was a Principal Investigator at the University of Cambridge, UK. Kevin is a protein trafficking expert, having worked on protein degradation for more than 10 years, notably in the autophagy-lysosomal field. Kevin has published more than 25 peer review papers including papers in Cell, Nature Cell Biology, Journal of Cell Biology and Nature Communications.
The research group leader Anja Zeigerer is functioning as PI in this project. Dr. Zeigerer conducted her PhD at Weill Cornell Medical School, NYC and obtained her degree at the University of Heidelberg in 2004. She moved on to do a first postdoc at Rockefeller University, NYC afterwards and a second one to the Max-Planck-Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden. Now she is leading her independent research group since 2015 at the IDC in Munich.
The Lipid Trafficking and Disease group, supervised by Albert Pol, was founded in 2001 to characterize the cellular processes regulated or altered due to lipid accumulation within cells and how these processes determine animal’s physiology and human disease.
Philip Zimmermann studied agronomy at ETH Zurich, performed a PhD in molecular biology and a post-doc in bioinformatics at ETH Zurich. After this post-doc he became oberassistant at ETH Zurich where he started the development of the Genevestigator platform. In 2008 NEBION was founded as a spin-off company where Philip currently is CEO.
Jana Sponarova studied molecular biology in Prag followed by several post-docs in Sweden and Switzerland in oncology and neurodegenerative diseases. In 2014 she started a position at Nebion AG where she currently leads the biomedical curation team at Nebion.
Professor Elina Ikonen, MD PhD, leads the Lipid Trafficking Lab at the Stem Cells and Metabolism Research Program, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki. She is the Chair of the HiLIFE BioImaging platform, Director of the Biomedicum Imaging Unit, EMBO member and European Coordinator of Foundation Leducq Transatlantic Network of Excellence in Cellular and systemic cholesterol transport in physiology and disease. She has previously supervised 15 postdoctoral fellows and 12 PhD theses into completion.
Prof. Dr. Joerg Heeren (born 1970) is Heisenberg Professor for Immunometabolism, deputy director of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology at UKE. He has great experience as principal investigator in national and international collaborative research initiatives. The consortium will benefit from his expertise in metabolic studies including nanoparticle-based imaging technologies, technologies to analyse systemic and organ-specific energy metabolism, and high-throughput platform technologies to monitor organ-specific metabolomics networks in adipose tissue.
Prof. Dr. Pablo J. Sáez (born 1984), recently appointed in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology at UKE. He has a large international network of collaborators due to his international training. His main expertise is in cell communication and cell migration using novel techniques (i.e. microfluidics and micropatterning). The consortium will benefit from his expertise on lyososomal calcium channels, as well as his expertise in cell signaling (ER-stress) induced by obesity.
Dr. Bart van de Sluis graduated in Biology from the Utrecht University, the Netherlands. In 1998, he was appointed as a PhD student at the Department of Human Genetics at the Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He received his PhD degree (cum laude, highest distinction in the Netherlands) in 2002. As a post-doctoral fellow, he continued his scientific career at the Genetics and Molecular Biology Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH, Bethesda, USA). Mid-2004, he returned back to Utrecht as a post-doc and in March 2008, he moved to Groningen to set up his own research group to further understand the molecular regulation of lipid metabolism. He is using cellular and mouse models to study these different processes in great detail. In addition, he runs a mouse transgenic mouse facility at the RUG/UMCG to generate new mouse models using different approaches, such as the CRISPR/Cas9 methodology.
Jan Albert Kuivenhoven started out as a molecular and cellular biologist (MSc 1991 cum laude; Wageningen University Research Center, the Netherlands). He finished his PhD at the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam (1996; Department of Experimental Vascular Medicine) on the genetics of high-density lipoprotein and triglyceride metabolism. Following a post-doc at the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Biology, Boston (1997-1999), where he worked on angiogenesis, he returned to Amsterdam and continued working on the genetics of human dyslipidemias. In September 2011, he moved to the University Medical Center Groningen (Department of Pediatrics) where he is heading a basic research group with strong translational focus on identification and molecular characterization of new genes with roles in lipid and lipoprotein metabolism. As of 2017, he has been appointed full Professor at the University Medical Center Groningen.
Judith Klumperman is cell biologist and expert in electron microscopy (EM). Her lab is internationally renowned for the use of immuno-EM and correlative light electron microscopy (CLEM). Her research is aimed to understand how genetic mutations lead to cellular disorganization and disease with focus on the endo-lysosomal pathway. Since 2018, Judith chairs the Netherlands Electron Microscopy Infrastructure’ (NEMI) for national coordinated investments in EM development, infrastructure and education.
Nalan Liv is an Assistant Professor in Cell Biology, UMC Utrecht, where she also coordinates the Cell Microscopy Core. Her scientific niche is at the interface of cell biology and advanced microscopy. Nalan studies organelle positioning, dynamics, and interactions by utilizing a strong combination of molecular biology, live-cell fluorescence microscopy, and ultrastructural electron microscopy tools. She is passionate about bridging state-of-the-art fluorescence and electron microscopy techniques for cell biology studies in 3D cellular models.
Jui Shinde is a PhD student in the Klumperman lab. Her research is focused on -CHEVI complex-mediated intracellular recycling. She is trying to understand the molecular basis of a multi-system disorder ‘ARC syndrome’ caused by mutations in the CHEVI complex. She is setting up knock out models in the liver and kidney organoids to further explore this disease phenotype by using advanced fluorescence and EM techniques. 
Prof. Peter Cullen is Professor of Biochemistry, Wellcome Trust Investigator and Medical Research Council Programme Grant Holder with the School of Biochemistry at the University of Bristol. With over 20 years of running an independent laboratory he has supervised 13 PhD students to completion. The vast majority are continuing to develop their careers as group leaders, post-docs in academic and industry, or through positions within funding agencies and medical publishing/writing.
Alain de Bruin is the head of department Biomolecular Health Sciences at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He obtained his DVM degree in 1994 at University of Hannover, Germany. He performed his PhD research in the field of cancer biology and graduated in 1999 at the University of Berne, Switzerland. From 1999-2005, he was a veterinary anatomic pathology resident and postdoctoral fellow at the Ohio State University, USA. In 2005 he was appointed as full Professor in Pathobiology at Utrecht University.