BMHC Mireille Sthijns

Expert: Mireille Sthijns

Eureka

Mireille Sthijns is a researcher and winner of the UM Impact Course 2019. As well, she is initiator of the Outreach Team at MERLN

Mireille Sthijns is a researcher and winner of the UM Impact Course 2019. As well, she is initiator of the Outreach Team at MERLN: "As a researcher you have a social obligation to explain what you are doing." A modest person by nature. Curious and eager to learn, ambitious, alert and active. Not afraid to change direction.

After her doctoral research in the field of redox biology, she resolutely switched to MERLN, to the world of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Here she is looking for more successful and sustainable ways for transplant treatment for patients with severe type I diabetes.

BMHC_Mirielle
Curious about how Mireille is doing now?
One year later

Patients with type I diabetes no longer produce insulin from the functional units in the pancreas - called the 'Islets of Langerhans'.  A donor transplantation of these 'islets' is possible. But... diabetes is an autoimmune disease. The body will attack the new cells as well and after two years most patients are back to square one. Injecting insulin is a symptomatic solution. So far, transplantation is a temporary solution. Mireille thinks she has found a permanent solution to make the transplant more successful, so that a patient with type I diabetes can really be cured.

"My Eureka moment was when I discovered that regenerative medicine did not yet take into account the negative effects of insufficient vascularization or blood flow. After all, during transplantation you disconnect; the islands from the blood vessels and thus from oxygen and nutrients. The subsequent imbalance of oxidants and antioxidants leads to oxidative stress and thus to even more damage. We already have created protective bio material 'bags' that encircle the transplanted 'islands'. Oxygen and nutrients can enter, but aggressive autoimmune cells cannot. Our idea is to optimize this protection mechanism by adding extra molecules to those 'bags'. By doing so, the transplanted cells will remain in a better condition until the blood circulation is restored. On top of that, they are permanently protected against the autoimmune cells. In this way, transplanting the 'Islets of Langerhans' could become a successful, effective and sustainable solution for people with type I diabetes. Of course, we could also use this solution if we were to use stem cells as an alternative".

We are working on the patent application. For now they are still in the process of validating the tests. Yes, there are already some promising results, but: " I'm not entitled to say anything about that yet."

Mireille is convinced that the solution to many scientific challenges can be found in joining forces. "That's another reason I came to MERLN. I am from a very biological background, but different disciplines work together here. Engineers, chemists, materials scientists... I often work with doctors, most recently with an endocrinologist from Leiden who carries out the clinical transplants of the “islets”. We really should work together much more: we need to combine the knowledge and skills of the various disciplines. Science should collaborate more with companies, professional groups should learn with and from each other. Together we know so much more and are so much stronger..."

One year later...

‘The heading of my story in the previous glossy was ‘I want to translate theory into practical solutions for the patient’. This heading continues to define what motivates me. At MERLN I completed my postdoc research on the improved protection of transplanted Islets of Langerhans for patients with severe type I diabetes. Now we are going to work towards clinical studies, and I changed institutes to be able to do this. I am now assistant professor of Food Innovation and Health at the Venlo campus of Maastricht University at the Centre for Healthy Eating and Food Innovation (HEFI). Everything comes together here: my background in redox biology, my experience at MERLN in the field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, the collaboration with companies, and the factor of nutrition.

In metabolic diseases, there are always several components at play, and nutrition is often one of them. By combining all disciplines and approaching a problem from multiple perspectives, you can come up with surprising solutions and, hopefully, ultimately create a product that can benefit a patient. In addition to the preparations for the clinical study, I am very busy with teaching. I will be coordinating a block for the first time in which I address the question: how do you get from an interesting discovery in the lab to a product on the market? Last year, the students in Venlo won a national prize for their plan of approach.

So the bar has been set pretty high! At MERLN I set up the outreach team, intended to tell "the outside world" about what we do, for example by visiting secondary schools and patient associations. I will continue to do this in Venlo, of course.’

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