SIMON VAN DE WAKKER MSC. PHARMD.

PhD Candidate
Extracellular vesicles | Extracellular vesicle heterogeneity | Upscaling

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Observed therapeutic effects from stem cell therapy after myocardial injury are mainly driven by their paracrine factors, such as extracellular vesicles (EVs), released by cells that support their environment. In our lab we are studying these EVs for cardiac repair.

The aim of my PhD is to improve cardiac function after myocardial infarction by stimulating EV-mediated repair. The main focus of my project is to study the heterogeneity of EVs. In this project I am studying the cardiac repair properties of different EV subpopulations to select the most active EV subpopulation. Furthermore, I am setting up a scalable production and isolation platform for EVs. In another project we will modify the content of EVs to optimize their cardiac repair properties.

Publications:

van de Wakker SI, et al. New drug-strategies to tackle viral-host interactions for the treatment of influenza virus infections. Eur J Pharmacol. 2017 Aug 15;809:178-190. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejphar.2017.05.038.

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E-mail: s.i.vandewakker-2@umcutrecht.nl

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