Earlier this year, Arno Bourgonje graduated cum laude on his doctoral thesis on biomarkers for the chronic intestinal disease IBD. Biomarkers are biological substances that can reflect a certain medical state or condition in the body. Biomarkers can help, for example, in early detection of disease or in predicting the effectiveness of treatment.

Arno found an important new biomarker that shows the severity of intestinal inflammation in IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease)-patients. His research also showed that there is a wide diversity of specific antibodies present in the blood in patients with IBD. Thanks to a brand new technique, he was already able to distinguish in a very accurate way patients with IBD from those without IBD with only a selection of ten antibodies. Arno is doing further follow-up research with the help of Lifelines into the possibility of being able to predict which people are at high risk of developing IBD in the future. He is going to New York now for two years for follow-up research. But he is determined to return to UMCG after that: 'UMCG feels almost like home'.

Who is Arno Bourgonje? And what drives him as a researcher? And what are the next steps in his research on IBD? He talks about it in this episode of UMCG Research Talk.

In this podcast we speak with Efi Gkoumassi, head of the Digital Compentence Center and Karina Sulim, data manager and data steward at the UMCG.  The digitization of research data is paving the way for faster and newer forms of data use, reuse, and sharing. In this new landscape, the responsible handling of data through data management is more important than ever.   

Molecular biologist Ody Sibon has been studying a rare disease called Pantothenate-Kinase-Associated-Neurodegeneration (PKAN) for years. By coincidence she discovers a vitamin derivative in a fruitfly model that might also help PKAN patients. To bring her research all the way to the patient she asked help of business developer Hans Hektor from the Innovation Center of the UMCG.  Together they succeeded in developing this medical food supplement for a clinical trial in patients. But, how? Where did they start? What challenges did they encounter? What did they learn? 

In this episode we speak with computational researcher and Rosalin Franklin Fellow Inge Holtman. She initiated the Netherlands Neurogenomics Database in collaboration with Inge Huitinga from the Netherlands Brain Bank, a cohort that was founded in 1985 by Dick Swaab. In this cohort brain tissues from all over the Netherlands are collected, together with a lot of clinical data from the donors. This offers a wealth of data for researchers. The aim of the  Netherlands Neurogenomics Database project is to analyse the cohort in its totality. To get an better understanding of how different neurological diseases develop Inge wants to find out which cells and molecules are affected by those diseases and relate that back to the symptoms. 

In this epsiode we speak with Job van Boven, health economics & real-world drug outcomes expert and Daan Touw, clinical pharmacologist, both member of the Medication Adherence Expertise Center Of the northern Netherlands (MAECON). They explain why it is important to enhance medication adherence and tell about their study in tuberculosis patients where they investigated if digital adherence technology can help patients adhere better to their therapy.

There is gender gap in the research landscape. The number of female professors has been rising over the past few years, but female scientists are still underrepresented at higher positions and in leadership roles. Why is that? And how can we reduce this gap?

In this episode discuss the gender gap in science with Marian Joëls, prof. of Neuroscience and dean of Medical Sciences at the UMCG who actively strives for the position of women in science and Marco Versluis gynaecologist, researcher and teacher at the UMCG, who is dedicated to equity in healthcare. 

*Disclaimer: Diversity in the research landscape entails more than just the balance between male and female scientists, but in this episode we focused mainly on gender differences.