University of Antwerp

Dr. Peter Ponsaerts

The University of Antwerp (UA) is a knowledge centre with 3.400 co-workers that performs ground-breaking and innovative research of international standing. The university takes special care to ensure optimum support and supervision of students, and pays constant attention to educational innovation. The university is an autonomous pluralistic institution that is committed to the enhancement of an open, democratic and multicultural society.

Within the Faculty of Medicine, the Laboratory of Experimental Hematology (Head: Prof. Dr. Zwi Berneman) has since 1993 developed an international track record in culture, differentiation and non-viral genetic modification of various primary cell types. Currently, the laboratory consist out of two major research groups: (i) the ‘cancer immunology and immunotherapy’ research group, and (ii) the ‘cell and gene therapy’ research group.

The ‘cell and gene therapy’ research group (supervised by Dr. Peter Ponsaerts) was established in 2003 as a multidisciplinary collaboration between the ‘Laboratory of Experimental Hematology’ and the UA Laboratories of ‘Clinical Pharmacotherapy’, ‘Experimental Surgery’, ‘Pathology’, ‘BioImaging’, and ‘Neurochemistry and Behavior’, aiming to develop multidisciplinary in vitro and in vivo stem cell research, focussing on:

1. Transplantation of adult and embryonic stem cells as a potential treatment for spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury.
   
2. Development of bioluminescence imaging techniques for in vivo real-time imaging of stem cell transplants.
   
3. Development of immune-based strategies to prevent immunological rejection of allogeneic stem cell transplants.
   
4. Development of messenger (m)RNA-based gene transfer strategies for self-renewal and differentiation of adult and embryonic stem cell populations.
   

Role within CRYSTAL project

In this project, together with partner KUL, we will investigate whether electroporation of human bone marrow- and cord blood-derived hematopoietic stem cells with mRNAs encoding master regulatory transcription and/or growth factors results in improved in vitro hematopoietic stem cell expansion and in vivo repopulation of SCID mice.

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