Inge Mannaerts

Postdoc project: "Liver Fibrosis reversal through hepatic stellate cell inactivation"

I am a postdoctoral researcher, with long experience in liver cell biology. I am experienced with animal models and in vitro models for studying liver fibrosis. 

We are working every day on understanding fibrosis progression out of curiosity, but mostly with the aim to help in the development of therapeutic strategies for this currently incurable disease. We also work on the development of alternative in vitro models to study liver fibrosis. We do this increase the translational value of our findings to mouse models and to human disease and importantly to reduce the number of experimental animals needed. 

I was just granted a second FWO postdoc fellowship to continue the work in the LIVR lab (01/10/2018 – 30/09/2021) . My current projects focus on tackling liver fibrosis by targeting hepatic stellate cell inactivation and investigating HSC activation in a context of cell-cell communication.

Besides designing and performing experiments, I daily supervise the work of master and phd students and teach several classes to the students of Biomedical sciences at the VUB.

Next to my research assignments, I give 2 guest lectures to Biomedical Science students at the VUB and I am president of the young Belgian association for study of the liver (YoungBASL). Young BASL aims at exchanging experiences in basic and clinical research in hepatology. Annually, we organize a liver course during the BASL wintermeeting and a session during the Belgian week of gastroenterology.

Short CV

• Current position:

  • 2014-current: FWO postdoc fellowship “Integration of stress pathways during the onset of hepatic stellate cell activation.”
  • 2016-current: 10% research professor
• PhD: 2007-2011: Liver Cell biology Lab, VUB “The Role Of Histone Deacetylases During Hepatic Stellate Cell Activation And Fibrogenesis” Promotors: Prof. Leo van Grunsven, Prof. Vera Rogiers
• Expertise: Lab animal models for liver fibrosis (CCl4, Bile duct ligation), Cell isolation, cell culture (2D and 3D), RNA extraction and qPCR, Western Blot, Immunohistochemistry, Flow cytometry, microfluidics handling, Confocal microscopy, migration assays (scratch and transwell), proliferation assays, Microarray analysis, hydroxyproline assay
• Reviewing work: PlosOne, Acta Belgica Gastroenterologica, Journal of Hepatology
• Committee & organisational duties: President Young BASL, Ethical committee laboratory animals VUB, Animal welfare body VUB, National Animal welfare body BCLAS
• Teaching assignments:
  • Topics in Biomedical sciences, 1^st master Biomedical sciences VUB
  • The Empirical cycle in practice, 1^st Bachelor Biomedical sciences VUB
• Membership of scientific societies:
  • EASL, BCLAS, BASL, BSCDB