Welcome to the Developmental, Stem Cell and Cancer Biology group

News

new publication: meeting report of the 2025 International Dutch Embryo Model Meeting

The meeting report of the 2025 International Dutch Embryo Model Meeting is now out and accessible to all in Biology Open via this link. The piece was co-written by all of the NWO-XL PhD students, including Jeske and Joëlle and found a great home with the Company of Biologists, who co-sponsored the event.

30 January, 2026

DSCCB participates in the FNWI DeepTech day 2026

The lab was well represented and actively involved at the first DeepTech day of the Faculty of Science. Meant to showcase our research and innovation across different areas (including the life sciences and biotech), but above all to connect our scientists with policymakers, investors and industry the event was designed to be high energy - and it lived up to its expectation.

Caitrín was the face of our lab at the DSCCB booth, where we showcased our new approach methodologies as "organoids for health innovation". Our pink neon sign shone brightly and our new glossy flyers were hot off the press to launch our "Build the future: Adopt a scientist" campaign.

Thijs pitched our pre-incubation stage valorization efforts towards developing a predictive molecular diagnostic tool for targeting WNT/CTNNB1 signaling in breast cancer in a parallel session on knowledge and technology transfer. First time we presented this work in front of a bigger audience from a valorization perspective, and an excellent way to test the waters and see what questions would be thrown at us. We got useful input that will help us to refine our pitch and business case and also made some exciting connections just in time for our Biotech Booster level 1 application.

Renée chaired the final plenary session of the day. This was an interactive panel discussion around the theme "From Deep Tech Research to Impact", with Constantijn van Oranje (special envoy of TechLeap), Peter Paul Verbeek (rector magnificus at the UvA), Emilia Olsson (group leader at ARCNL) and Renée Frissen (who co-wrote the National AI Deltaplan).

We definitely felt a bit of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial spirit seep in. We hope it will linger and are inspired to move forward, strengthened by the knowledge that Deep Tech is, by definition, steeped in basic research and lengthy research and development trajectories.

28 January, 2026

KWF grant awarded

We could not have wished for a better Christmas present or way to end the year with a bang: This week we learned that Renée’s grant application "Targeting the WNT/CTNNB1 pathway in breast cancer" was awarded by KWF kankerbestrijding (the Dutch Cancer Society).

This also means that we will be hiring a PhD student and a bioinformatician in the upcoming months!

This project will be a continuation of our last KWF project grant (awarded in 2017), which allowed us to study if and how the WNT pathway is deregulated in human cancer. We are now moving one step further: While there is still a lot of fundamental work to be done, our next grant will also allows us to test if we can now predict which breast cancer patients will respond to a specific WNT pathway intervention.

Thijs and Caitrín are co-PIs on the grant. We are also looking forward to collaborating with other colleagues in the Netherlands and abroad, including Jos Jonkers (NKI).
Exciting times ahead!

We are especially excited that our project was one of 21 research proposals selected to be funded by the proceeds from Alpe d’Huzes.

19 December, 2025

Oratie now also available in PDF and on You Tube

Renée’s oratie is now officially available in written form via UvA DARE via this link. Check it out, because it includes extra bonus material!

The original recording hosted by the UvA will expire after a month, so here is a permanent link to the oratie on You Tube:

6 December, 2025

Oratie Renée

On Thursday 20 November Renée delivered her oratie, or inaugural address "Life, actually: over taaie systemen en bonte details" in the Aula of the Universiteit of Amsterdam.
Thanks to the lab for keeping the show on the road while Renée took some much needed time in the past few weeks to write and tweak the whole thing and thanks to all the guests who came to the ceremony and reception, including a bunch of Biomedical Sciences students.

Those who missed it can still watch it via this link.

And with that, the appointment as Hoogleraar Fundamenteel Stamcel- en Kankeronderzoek (Professor of Stem Cell and Cancer Biology) is officially official. Back to business!

PS: The 45 minute lecture will soon also become available as a PDF and will be published by the UvA university library on UvA DARE. Once it is done, the link will be made available here as well.

20 November, 2025

Joëlle attends workshop by the Company of Biologists

Joëlle was selected to take part in a workshop "New Technologies for Studying and Reprogramming Development", organized by the Company of Biologists and held at Buxted Park in East Sussex, UK. Supported with a travel grant by the Stichting Biochemie, and with an amazing line up of speakers, this was a great opportunity to get input on our own work and to discuss the challenges associated with integrating multi-modal datasets at single-cell resolution.

18 November, 2025

Congratulations dr. Aarts!

On Friday 14 November Marleen defended her PhD thesis "Navigating progesterone-driven gene regulatory networks in the mammary gland" in the Aula of the University of Amsterdam.

Marleen is the sixth PhD student of the lab to defend her thesis, but this is the first time that both the promotor (Renée) and co-promotor (Thijs) came from our own Developmental, Stem Cell and Cancer Biology group. A joyous occasion on may different levels!

Marleen gave a very nice lekenpraatje, comparing gene regulatory networks to switches in a factory and did a very good job during the defense, resulting in a lively discussion with the five opponents.

A special thanks to Dr. Cathrin Brisken to traveling to Amsterdam from Switzerland to join us for the event.

Left: Marleen receives the official diploma from Thijs.
Right: Marleen with proud promotor and co-promotor.

14 November, 2025

Proof of concept grant from IXA awarded

We are excited to report that Renée and Thijs received a Proof of Concept grant from IXA. After lengthy discussions with our technology transfer office and patent lawyers, the award of this grant will help us to try and obtain proof of concept in an effort to strengthen a patent application.

We are one step closer to bringing our findings on WNT signaling in breast cancer from bench to bedside. So far it has been an educational and informative journey and we still have a ways to go (we are already thinking about the next steps) but this is a step in the right direction and a very exciting development for the lab as this is quite a new adventure!

12 November, 2025

PAN podium: Art in the university

At the invitation of the Amsterdams Universiteitsfonds, who previously sponsored our artist in residence program, Renée was invited to take part in a panel discussion at the PAN Art Fair, a large annual art, antiques and design fair at the RAI convention center in Amsterdam. The fair also hosts PAN podium, "a space to be inspired, to connect, to enjoy, and to exchange knowledge" - or, in other words: a forum for discussion of all things art and arts related.

Chaired by Kornelis Fragakis, art curator at TU Delft, Renée joined Babette van den Broek (TU Delft), Jom Luiten (TU Eindhoven) and artist Simone Ho&grava;ng to talk about the collaboration and synergy of art and science.

This was also a nice opportunity to try out the Fishbowl format, which invites members of the public seated in an outer ring to join the inner ring and take active part in the discussion, ensuring that multiple points of view can be heard.

4 November, 2025

Podcast recording

Renée was a guest on an episode of the UvA Podcast "Net Echt" to talk about the new Jurassic World movie. There are worse homework assignments than having to watch a movie in Tuschinski!

This combined everything that Renée holds dear (science, movies and screenwriting), so this was really an exciting opportunity for outreach.

Listen to the episode via Spotify:

17 July, 2025

Berlin Summer School

Rhanna learned essential bioinformatics skills and built a network of expert collaborators by attending the 9th summerschool on NGS data analysis in Berlin, Germany.
Thank you to the Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde (GNGH) and the Stichting ter bevordering van het onderzoek in de Biochemie for awarding the travel grants that made this possible!
Time to put these new skills to the test as the data from Rhanna’s first RNAseq experiment should be forthcoming...

5 July, 2025

multi-leg USA visit for the sake of science and our fellow scientists

Renée made her first trip to the United States in quite some time. While she could think of plenty of reasons to not visit as a protest to some of the anti-science developments that are taking place, ultimately she decided that the global geopolitical situation warrants scientists to stick and come together (even if not all scientists are able or feel comfortable to travel/go/work where they would like to at the moment) - and simply to do science in the interest of science and the greater public good. Moreover, there were multiple events scheduled that made the long journey worthwhile as it meant hanging out with friends and colleagues in the WNT signaling community.

First stop: The Gordon Research Conference on WNT signaling in Maine, where she chaired a session and got the opportunity to give a last minute short talk. Still not a big fan of single person plastic dorm pillows and mattresses or shared toilet and shower facilities, but remembering that her old teenage self would have loved this dorm room experience helped. Excellent dining hall at Bates College. though. Who doesn ’t love a soft ice machine.

Second stop: The west coast and Renée’s first return to Stanford since her postdoc days. The occasion was a symposium in honour of Roel Nusse ’s 75th birthday, which Renée helped co-organize. She gave a talk and hosted the Fireside Chat that wrapped up the day. It was lovely to reminisce with former (we should not say old, because they are all aging as if they have spent a lot of time working on a stem cell self renewal factor) lab mates and others that shared a WNT or Nusse connection.

Third stop: San Francisco, for a two-day research visit with Laura van ’t Veer to discuss collaborations on targeting WNT/CTNNB1 signaling in breast cancer. Renée gave a talk for the iSPY executive committee, which was a great opportunity to pitch our work in front of translational scientists involved in one of the biggest clinical trials in the field of breast cancer today. After a second talk at UC Davis (enabled by The Internet in the form of a zoom talk), it was time to wrap up and go home to go back to teaching and grant writing.

From left to right: honorary group picture at the GRC, honorary group picture at the WNT symposium at Stanford, original MSc thesis describing the cloning of human WNT1

4 July, 2025

Jasper gives a talk at the 2025 SILS research day

Jasper got the opportunity to present his work in a talk at the annual SILS research day. Behind the scenes, Rhanna and Joëlle were involved in the organisation as members of the SILS PhD and postdoc council.

28 June, 2025

annual lab BBQ

Thijs kindly hosted the annual lab BBQ again. The weather complied, Jasper took the BSc and MSc students for a short boat ride (and safely returned everyone), the salads and tiramisu were delicious and testified to the excellent practical skills of those involved in their making. Good times were had by all.

2 June, 2025

Cake at De Polder to celebrate publication of our new review article

We had cake in De Polder (again...) to celebrate publication of our review article, Towards an integrated view and understanding of embryonic signalling during murine gastrulation, which is out now in Cells and Development.
The paper is published in part 2 of the Spemann and Mangold centennial special issue, which focuses on self organization in biology. Our review mainly discusses the similarities and differences in developmental signaling via WNT, NODAL, BMP and to a lesser extent FGF between gastruloid models and real embryos. This includes a perspective on how embryo models may be used to advance our understanding of signalling dynamics through computational modeling.

We also ended the day with a social get together, as today was the last official working day of Marleen, who is wrapping up the writing of her PhD thesis and is scheduled to defend in November.

By chance, most of the authors could be captured in a single picture (left), but the whole lab enjoyed cake (right). We learned that our students made the VWO (high school) biology exam (and scored a solid 8), which apparently contained a question about snake venom organoids.

28 May, 2025

25 years of SILS and FNWI

This year officially marks the 25th anniversary of the Science Faculty, as well as of the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences. All of the official celebrations coincided in one single week.

On Tuesday, we celebrated the birthday of the faculty (FNWI) and also said our official goodbyes to the current dean, Peter van Tienderen. Together with the departing and very first dean of the faculty, Walter Hoogland, Renée was interviewed by FOLIA. You can watch the video on YouTube.

It was a sunny day, so the celebrations were outside on the last remaining open quadrangle on campus, around the volleyball courts (and the annual volleyball tournament). The Cell and Systems Biology team (with Joëlle, Marleen and Rhanna together with colleagues from our neighboring labs) came in 6th place.

Marleen, Rhanna and Joëlle teamed up with others to form a Cell & Systems Biology theme team.

On Thursday afternoon, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Swammerdam Institute. The event was held in De Rode Hoed, a famous location in Amsterdam. It was hosted by philosopher and outsider Bas Haring, which made for some interesting questions and angles. In addition to a panel interview (with representatives of the early and current years, including our former PhD student Anoeska), short videos made by PhD students and postdocs and short talks about some of the societal impact of our work, and woo claps about the future of AI in our research and teaching, we celebrated the official launch of some of the new branding materials for our institute.
Thijs has been actively involved in this project, which included a collaboration with designers from Van Lennep, and prior to the big reveal he gave an introduction on the work of Jan Swammerdam and the excitement about scientific discovery that we still share with him today.

Celebrating the Swammerdam Institute (looks like SILS will only be used for internal and admin purposes from now on) in De Rode Hoed, a beautiful old building on the Keizersgracht, which used to be a church once up on a time, but which is more famous for having hosted a talkshow with Sonja Barend.

23 May, 2025

New publication: Review in Cells and Development

We are excited that our new literature review on gastrulation, gastruloids and computer modelling is out. The study, with Rhanna and Jeske as shared first authors, is part of a special issue of the journal Cells and Development, marking the discovery of the Spemann and Mangold organiser, now over 100 years ago.

In a true team effort, we have brought together a wealth of information on what is known about how embryonic signalling orchestrates the first steps in mouse embryonic development. Although this process has been studied in embryos for many decades, there are still many unanswered questions. Luckily, a relatively new wave of cell culture based models that we also use in the lab, termed gastruloids, is shedding some light on the dynamics and interplay between these signals.

Together with our NWO-XL collaborators Marten Postma and Jeske Strik, we also provide an overview on how computational modelling will be used in the future to study these processes. Ultimately, this kind of work will us help us solve one of the most interesting questions in developmental biology; how a complete organism is formed out of one single fertilised egg.

12 May, 2025

Cake at De Polder to celebrate our new pre-print

It was a sunny day and we had cake outside at De Polder to celebrate our most recent pre-print. We did not think about taking a picture until after the cake was gone, but luckily the pre-print is still there: "GRHL and PGR control WNT4 expression in the mammary gland via 3D looping of conserved and species-specific enhancers".

More good news, as in the morning we also heard that our review on gastruloids was accepted for publication in a special issue of Cells and Development, in honour of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Spemann Organizer. More on that later.

29 April, 2025

New pre-print: A decade of work all in one place...

We are excited to share this labour of love (and blood, sweat and tears along the way) with the world:

Check out the thread on Bluesky here.

Our story ‘GRHL and PGR control WNT4 expression in the mammary gland via 3D looping of conserved and species-specific enhancers’ is now available as a pre-print on Biorxiv (and is under review with a journal after a brutal initial rejection by Cell).
Yorick, Marleen, Katrin and Nika are shared first authors on this massive effort, which started as Aim 1A of Renée’s NWO VIDI grant, but which has ended up becoming an entire new line of research in the lab on tissue-specific gene regulation, bringing us accompanying insights into the conserved and species-specific enhancers that control Wnt4 / WNT4 expression in mature luminal cells in the mouse mammary gland and human breast.

It has been a bumpy ride (with lots of help from and thanks to the multiple BSc and MSc students that joined the project over the years) as we had to learn to decipher the 4D genome, and you may wonder whether it is sustainable to save 10 years worth of work for a single paper (disclaimer: it is not, and we are not sure that this can or should ever be repeated), but this is what (and how long) it took to get a grasp on the complex and dynamic regulation of tissue-specific gene expression.

Katrin and Nika began the heroic effort of exploring the Wnt enhancer landscape in the mammary gland, starting entirely from scratch and eventually zooming in on Wnt4 (which for a short while we thought might be too boring because it had already been linked to operating downstream of progesterone, but which ended up being a good choice to learn the ropes as the sole protein coding gene in its predicted TAD).
This initial discovery stage was hampered tremendously because our lab was scheduled to move to a different campus which kept being postponed again and again (together with our mouse breeding and experiment planning) up until 2017. As a result, data collection was slow and tedious, but around 2019 we had a collection of cis-regulatory sequences and dCas9 assays to show that they were in communication with the Wnt4 promoter. We were till in limbo as to which enhancer we were going to knock out in vivo, until Yorick performed 4C experiments that showed physical looping between mCRS4 and the mouse Wnt4 promoter. We had our candidate.

Then the pandemic hit. Initially forced by limited access to the lab, but with increasing gusto, Yorick spent a lot of time behind the computer, where increasingly complex bioinformatics (including Cicero analysis to predict which elements would be open and active at the same time as - and thus potentially interacting with - the Wnt4 promoter, and a transcription factor discovery pipeline to link individual enhancers to the transcription factors that bind them) started to complete the picture.

There was still a major hole in the story: We were struggling to measure progesterone-dependent effects. With fresh energy, Marleen slayed this prior-to-last dragon and developed the tools to finally do so (spoiler alert: Wnt4 induction has a very small dynamic range), while also tackling the last hurdle of scrutinising our CRS4 knockout mice, which we generated in collaboration with the NKI. The hunt for a phenotype ended where some might have feared it would: with presumable redundancy among enhancers to ensure robustness in vivo. On the bright side, we do detect a solid, 50% decrease of Wnt4 expression (still sufficient to ensure normal development) in the E14.5 embryonic lung when the single mCRS4 enhancer is removed.

In these last few years, we also came to the realisation that similarities at the gene and protein level between species do not necessarily translate to their enhancer sequences. Therefore, we also mapped and dissected the human WNT4 enhancer network, which led us to discover conserved, and species-specific features.

Ultimately, all is well that ends well, which is typically the case when very complex findings can be summed up in a simple cartoon, so we will leave you with that one. Read the paper to get the details and let us know what you think!

17 April, 2025

OrganoidNL 2025

Most of the lab attended the third OrganoidNL meeting, where Jasper also presented a poster. Read more about this day in a short report on the AMOLF website, drafted by Jasper and our collaborators at AMOLF.

It is really great that this initiative is growing out into such a high quality, returning event (and all the more stupid that René had to miss out because she somehow managed to forget to sign up for the meeting in time, not realising until after it had reached full capacity).

11 April, 2025

Girls Day

On the 10th of April our faculty hosted approximately 50 elementary school girls aged 10-12, who visited Science Park on the occasion of Girls Day - an annual initiative of VHTO, the national center of expertise "voor haar technologische ontwikkeling" ("for her technological development") to increase participation of women in STEM and IT professions.

Renée gave a talk on how the human body works with special attention to how the breast tissue works and develops under the influence of hormones. After that, the students went on for a whole additional program of excitement, which included robots, a visit to the telescopes and a DNA isolation practical.

Hopefully, they will remember this day in the future as igniting a spark for these areas of science. Meanwhile, Renée is trying very hard to forget about the AV system start up issues because for some mysterious reason suddenly the AV system in the room was behind a closed and locked door - and particularly about the embarrassing and stereotype proving fact that the only man in the room eventually provided access to said AV system by opening the cabinet from the inside out after Renée had demolished the side panel - where it should be noted that all of the girls came up with much more inventive suggestions such as using safety and bobby pins to pick the lock from the outside. Extra shade shall be thrown to the unnamed designer of the AV lockbox slash escape room excercise, who managed to design a lock that looks like it should be opened with a key (which was missing, thus starting the whole AV non-accessibility issue in the first place) when in reality one is apparently supposed to ignore said lock and turn the decorative plastic knob surrounding it because it is only a simple latch masquerading as a lock).

Never a dull moment!

10 April, 2025

The 2025 international Dutch embryo model meeting

Guess whose gastruloid is on the cover of the program booklet of the 2025 International Dutch embryo model meeting? According to the small print it is Joëlle’s!

Held in Nijmegen, and organized by multiple Dutch consortia (PSIDER from ZonMW and our NWO-XL consortium) the meeting showcases the exciting developments in mammalian blastoid and gastruloid research, with room for short sessions on valorization and ethical implications of the work.

The first day was off to an exciting start with poster presentations by Jeske, Joëlle and Rhanna and a sleuth of captivating talks varying from human blastocyst implantation models from Maastricht to molecular recorders for lineage tracing (Zoom talk by Jay Shendure) and exciting new data from Suzanne van den Brink.
Day two featured more exciting biology and cutting edge technology from Alexander van Oudenaarden, Maike Hansen and Vikas Trivedi.
Ample time was reserved for the societal implications of basic and translational embryo model research: The Rathenau Institute shared its preliminary findings from the festival tour with the "Holland’s Next Embryo Model" outreach event (to which our group also contributed, see prior posts) and presented public opinions with respect to the model itself, the individual and larger society. This was followed by a lively debate style session in the ethical aspects of these models and their implications was led by ethicists from Leiden and Maastricht. This included our former MSc student Melanie Rietveld, who recently started her PhD in Maastricht focusing on the ethics of reproductive health.
The closing session included zoom talks from the US - first by Matt Krisiloff of the Silicon Valley company Conception and second by George Church whose many conflict of interest disclaimers alone highlighted his tremendous productivity in different areas of stem cell research.

Plenty of food for thought about the basic science and translational possibilities and societal implications in this exciting and rapidly developing area of research!

28 March, 2025

Co-authorships for Joelle and Thijs on a new publication in Plos One

Joëlle and Thijs are co-authors on a new study led by Marloes Blotenburg and Peter Zeller, which was published in Plos One. Other members of our NWO-XL consortium, including Danique Bax and Hendrik Marks from Nijmegen, also contributed to this work.

The study describes the impact of different culture conditions of mouse embryonic stem cells on their in vitro differentiation and gastruloid formation potential. It adds to the body of work that highlights how different experimental conditions affect the timing, dynamics and efficiency of germ layer formation and morphogenesis of in vitro embryo models for early mammalian development.

27 March, 2025

The annual group picture - edition 2025

Cherry blossom galore, so luckily we realized that it was our window of opportunity for the annual group picture. The backdrop (no AI) did not disappoint!

25 March, 2025

Goodbye Anna

We cannot believe that it has been two years already, but Anna’s contract runs out at the end of the month. To say goodbye, we went for jeu de boule and (alcohol free) beer and snacks. Prior to that, Anna presented an overview of her work in our lab meeting, with tips and pointers for how to proceed with her cell lines (and any new ones that we may still generate).

Thank you Anna for all your hard work on the NWO-XL project to get our gastruloid research line up and running - and for moving back and forth between our lab and the NKI as a shared technician with Tineke Lenstra.