News

A collaboration between the laboratories of Vincent Bonin (NERF, empowered by VIB, imec and KU Leuven) and Matthew Holt (VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research) reveals that noradrenaline plays a key role in how astrocytes – star-shaped cells in the brain closely associated with neurons – track distinct information during behavior. 

The VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research has attracted two new faculty members in an international search for talent. Sandrine Da Cruz worked in San Diego and in Leuven she will lead a laboratory focusing on the mechanisms of ALS, while Lynette Lim worked in London and she will lead a group focusing on the development of neuronal circuits. 

Researchers led by Pierre Vanderhaeghen and Jérôme Bonnefont (VIB-KU Leuven and ULB), in collaboration with Stein Aerts (VIB KU Leuven) and François Guillemot (Crick Institute), have unraveled a new mechanism controlling the switch between growth and differentiation of neural stem cells during brain development. They discovered a specific factor that makes stem cells ‘deaf’ to proliferative signals, which in turn causes them to differentiate into neurons and shape the marvelous complexity of our brain.

Our second example of the intense exchange of our basic science researchers with the Discovery Sciences team leads us into the field of neurology and peripheral neuropathies. More specifically to Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), an incurable progressive weakening and atrophy of distal limb muscles. Patients develop foot deformities and gait difficulties, and also experience sensory abnormalities. CMT has a severe impact on the quality of life of its patients. Ludo Van Den Bosch, who is specialized in CMT, is professor neurobiology at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research. 

An international team of researchers at VIB-KU Leuven, Belgium, the UK Dementia Institute and the Children’s Cancer Institute, Australia, have found a safer treatment for a specific type of leukemia. By refining a therapeutic avenue that was previously abandoned because of its severe side effects, they came up with a targeted approach that was both effective and safe in mice and in human cancer cells.