The researchers Wouter Meijers and Martijn Hoes of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) will receive a grant from the Heart Foundation of more than 245 thousand and 270 thousand euros respectively for research into cardiovascular diseases.
These are so-called Dekker grants, personal research grants for talented scientists that are awarded annually. This year ten researchers, including Wouter Meijers and Martijn Hoes, will receive such a grant.
Heart damage in immunotherapy
Wouter Meijers will investigate how immunotherapy – in which drugs ensure that cells in our immune system that have been deactivated can render cancer cells harmless again – leads to damage to the heart, and whether it is possible to counteract this damage.
He also wants to investigate whether it is better to (temporarily) stop immunotherapy in patients who have a heart attack during immunotherapy.
Heart failure due to pregnancy
Some pregnant women develop heart failure during or shortly after pregnancy. The heart of a pregnant woman uses fats to get extra energy.
After pregnancy, the heart switches back to sugars and fats. Martijn Hoes discovered that this does not happen fast enough in the heart muscle cells of these heart failure patients.
Because pregnancy hormones determine how the heart uses energy, Hoes investigates how hormones can disrupt the metabolism in heart cells. To do this, he makes heart cells from stem cells grown from the skin cells of these women.
In this way Martijn can find out which genes do not respond well to changes in hormones. He is also studying whether certain drugs can protect heart cells.
You can follow these topics
– –
