Three Vidi grants for FHML researchers
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) announced today which researchers will receive a Vidi grant. This grant enables talented scientists to further develop their research line and to start or expand their own research group. Three researchers at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) are granted a Vidi: Aurélie Carlier (MERLN), Bart Spronck (CARIM) and Nicole Leibold (MHeNs).
In total, the NWO has awarded Vidi grants to 149 scientists. Each researcher will receive a maximum of 850,000 euros.
How women and men handle drugs differently
Why are most medications prescribed to women and men at the same dose, when women experience bad side effects of medications almost twice as often? This is because we do not fully understand how medication processing in the kidneys differs between women and men. In this project, Aurélie Carlier will create novel experimental and computational tools to investigate how female and male kidneys handle medications differently. This knowledge will enable the analysis of sex differences in the early stages of drug development, help to develop sex-specific dosing guidelines and reduce the chances of patients reacting negatively to their medications.
The aorta as a key to personalised treatment of high blood pressure
Patients with elevated blood pressure are often treated with medications that relax the muscle cells in their smallest arteries, causing these arteries to dilate and blood pressure to drop. In some patients, such medications are ineffective, possibly because they also dilate the aorta. In this project, Bart Spronck investigates how aortic vasodilation affects the blood pressure dampening effect of the aorta, and whether this explains why these drugs are sometimes not effective. Using the resulting data, a computer model is developed to predict whether vasodilatory antihypertensive treatment will be beneficial or detrimental to the individual patient, allowing optimal treatment from the start.
What causes panic attacks?
Panic attacks are highly distressing and lead to intense anxiety of future attacks. Current treatments do not work well, because we do not know exactly what causes panic attacks. Therefore, Nicole Leibold aims to uncover what triggers them at the biological level and where in the brain the triggers originate. A combination of research in cells, mice, and humans will provide new knowledge that is needed to develop more effective treatments for those suffering from panic attacks.
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Ron Heeren appointed fellow of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering
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