CARIM Symposium  - 24 November 2021

Posting a vacancy @ CARIM

CARIM Crijns Crowdfunding Kick off 19 May

CARIM Course Week  202

Dear all,

Despite the uncertainties around COVID-19 and the restrictions related to the lockdown we still intend to organize the CARIM course week this year. Given these restrictions, the courses will probably be in a somewhat slimmer, digital, version.
 
The CARIM Courses are scheduled from June 14-18, 2021.
Please, mark these dates in your agenda already!
 
The CARIM Courses allow you to get acquainted with state-of–the-art technologies and novel concepts in Cardiovascular Research. Equally important, it allows you to meet fellow-PhDs and CARIM staff (albeit not in person this year). This will help you to generate new ideas, to boost your own research, and to extend your network.
 
The topics of the courses of this year are:

• Heart Failure Research
• Non-Invasive Biomedical Imaging

CARIM Horizon Europe information sessions

UM Campus Brussels

 is UM’s very own representation in the capital of the European Union (EU). It functions as an inter-faculty hub for education, research, and networking activities in the framework of UM’s internationalisation strategy. Campus Brussels is available to use for all UM staff and students. Non-commercial activities related to education, research and knowledge transfer of UM can make use of Campus Brussels free of charge. To find out more on the possibilities at the Campus please click here.
 
Campus Brussels’ facilities comprise three equipped meeting rooms – one for ca. 60 and two for ca. 25 people, which are there to be used for events by the UM community. It also provides staff support when organising online and on-site activities, from event planning and implementation (e.g. programme design, speaker search, registration management, coordination with local suppliers, etc.) to monitoring EU policy issues of interest. UM staff and students can also make use of the Academic Coworking Hub at the Campus to meet and network with colleagues when in Brussels. 

• UM Campus Brussels useful links & brochures

Paramount Papers

Abstract

Rationale: In the microenvironment of atherosclerotic lesions, vascular smooth muscle cells (vSMCs) switch to a dedifferentiated state but the underlying molecular mechanisms driving this switch are not fully understood. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are dysregulated during vascular pathology, but relatively little is known about their involvement in controlling vSMCs function. CARMN is a lncRNA located immediately upstream of the microRNAs (miRNAs) miR-143 and miR-145, both involved in vSMCs function. Objective: We investigated the role of the lncRNA CARMN, independent from miR-143 and miR-145, as potential a regulator of vSMC phenotypes in vitro and the consequences of its loss during the development of atherosclerosis in vivo. We hypothesized that loss of CARMN is a primary event controlling the functional switch towards pro-atherogenic vSMC phenotype and accelerates the development of the plaques in vivo. Methods and Results: Expression of CARMN lncRNA was silenced using GapmeRs in human coronary arterial smooth muscle cells (hCASMCs), revealing that GapmeR-mediated loss of CARMN negatively affects miR-143 and miR-145 miRNA expression. RNA sequencing of CARMN-depleted hCASMCs revealed large transcriptomic changes, associated with vSMC proliferation, migration, inflammation, lipid metabolism and dedifferentiation. The use of miR-143 and miR-145 mimics revealed that CARMN regulates hCASMC proliferation in a miRNA-independent manner. In human and mouse, CARMN and associated miRNAs were downregulated in advanced versus early atherosclerotic lesions. Using a CRISPR-Cas9 knock-out approach, we explored the implications of CARMN depletion during atherosclerosis in vivo. Consistent with in vitro results, the knock-out of CARMN impaired the expression of miR-143 and miR-145 under homeostatic conditions. Importantly, when atherosclerosis was induced in these mice, CARMN knock-out increased the volume, size, pro-inflammatory LGALS3-expressing cells content and altered plaque composition, yielding an advanced phenotype. Conclusions: We identified the early loss of CARMN lncRNA as critical event which primes vSMCs towards a pro-atherogenic phenotype in vitro and accelerates the development of atherosclerosis in vivo.

Grants Grace

Information sessions New UM Flying Policy

Dutch Translational Metabolism Conference 2021 seminar series

In 2020, we aimed to organize the first Dutch Translational Metabolism Conference, with(inter)national speakers from different disciplines working in the field of metabolism. The goal of this meeting was to bring together and facilitate interaction between all metabolic experts in the Netherlands, both junior and senior, who study metabolism with the ultimate aim to prevent and/or treat disease. The focus is on translational research, bridging the gap between fundamental research to application in humans and validation at the population-level.
 
Despite the overwhelming enthusiasm, we had to cancel the first edition of our conference because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To maintain our community through 2021, we decided to organize an online seminar series with sessions on the first Thursday of each month from 16:00-17:15 CET, with one Keynote lecture and one short talk by an early-career scientist from our community.

Lectures, symposia & events

Who's New?!

My name is Chrit Geraeds. I studied medicine at the University Maastricht and received my master’s degree in August 2020. I have worked at the Cardiology department of the VieCuri hospital in Venlo for half a year after which I have started as a PhD candidate here at CARIM at the first of March. I will be working with Prof. H.P. Brunner-La Rocca and will be focusing on congestion in heart failure from various perspectives.

I will be joining the heart failure research group under the supervision of Prof. Heymans. My PhD-track will focus on the translation of basic research into clinical practice, with a special interest in nonischemic dilated cardiomyopathy. After the completion of my medical degree in Leuven I had a lot of fun as an intern at the cardiology department of the Zuyderland Medical Centre in Heerlen. I hope to make the experience I have gained during that period to good use. In my spare time I love to enjoy life in the company of family and friends. I recently got engaged to my girlfriend, who is a PhD candidate in Ophthalmology under the supervision of prof. Nuijts

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