News and Events

Lisenka in the US of A.

Lisenka is currently at the lab of Professor Lupski for a visit of 3 months. She will there, at the Baylor College of Medicine Houston-Texas, learn the techniques needed for the pinpointing of the genetic deletion or duplication involved in the various CHARGE patients During her stay she also visited the American Society of Human Genetics in Salt Lake City. Furthermore she managed to acquire two prestigiuos grants: 1 the dr. I.B.M. Frye stipendium and a fellowship of the "Nationale Regio-Orgaan Genomics".

A growing facility and research group!

New personnel As of this year a total of seven new persons joined our group. Two technicians were appointed for the diagnostic array unit: Ine Scheltinga and Ineke Neefs. They will perform diagnostic genome profiling under supervision of Rolph Pfundt. The oncology research group is now formed by Roland Kuiper (postdoctoral fellow) and Eveline Kamping (technician). Two bio-informaticians were appointed for research projects and support, Michael Egmont-Petersen (see below) and Jayne Hehir. Finally a new PhD student, Terry Vrijenhoek, started in the clinical genetics research group. In addition, we are currently looking for a technician for the clinical genetics research group of Joris Veltman (VIDI grant, see below). For more information, please contact Joris Veltman. New equipment In March 2005 an Affymetrix Genechip system has been purchased as part of the Dutch Program for Tissue Engineering (see below). This system allows reproducible high-density expression and DNA analyses. Since February this year the system has been upgraded for the use of the 500K SNP arrays, 7G field upgrade. Furthermore an Autoloader for the Genechip Scanner and an extra Hybridisation Oven and Fluidic Station were installed. See for a list of available arrays: www.affymetrix.com Quality control before and during the experiments is improved by a new Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100, in conjunction with a new Nanodrop system.

Dutch program for tissue engineering (DPTE)

The DPTE is formed by a consortium of research groups from several Dutch universities, academic institutes and hospitals, joined by pioneering companies and supporting organizations. The objective of the DPTE is to build a strong infrastructure that integrates new knowledge, stimulates collaborations and facilitates utilization of tissue engineering products, see the dpte website. The program encompasses ~ M€ 50 in research projects and will enable the Netherlands to acquire a leading position in an important and promising biomedical field. The Microarray Facility Nijmegen is the core facility (link) for microarray-based expression profiling within the DPTE. An Affymetrix Genechip system has been acquired together with personnel for performing the expression profiling experiments (technician, Simon van Reijmersdal) and for data analysis (bioinformatician, Michael Egmont-Petersen). Additional equipment (including an Agilent Bioanalyzer and a Nanodrop system for RNA and labelling QC) is available within the facility, as well as commercial (including Genespring from Silicon Genetics) and in-house developed software for data analysis.

Further news

VIDI grant Joris Veltman (NWO-Toekenningen VIDI juli 2005) New publications in Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics, Genes Chromosomes and Cancer, Blood, European Journal of Human Genetics, Oncogene, American Journal of Human Genetics (in press), and Human Molecular Genetics.