van Amerongen Lab - Developmental, Stem Cell & Cancer Biology

Welcome students!

All of the new students have started their internships, which we celebrated by going out for lunch in De Polder. Time for a quick (because cold and very windy) group picture - alas not fully complete because, well, corona. Better luck next lunch.



We hope that there will be more light (or rather: space) on the horizon as the lab is again at full occupancy and we are still trying to keep 1.5 meters distance...

Thanks to everyone for sticking with it and continuing to make the best of this whole situation! Stay calm, and keep pipetting.

8 February, 2022

In which we present our artist in residence project to the world

Rosa and Renée presented the first results of the artist in residency at SPUI25. There was room for a small live audience, with others watching the livestream at home.



The topic of the evening was "Poezie onder de microscoop" (or "poetry under the microscoop"), in which we asked the question: is the lab a place for poetry? Wat can science and poetry learn from each other?



We especially liked how interactive the evening was - so thank you to all the audience members for actively participating in the discussion and thank you to Gemma Venhuizen for moderating the evening.

This first presentation has left us hungry for more, so ware are now contemplating ways to follow up. Yes, we are available for parties and conferences and meetings.

You can still watch the recording of the evening here:
https://spui25.nl/programma/poezie-onder-de-microscoop

The first blog posts inspired by this evening have also appeared online:
The first based on the question whether our science is actually already art can be found here and the second one inspired by a technical glitch in the matrix can be found here (both in Dutch).

1 February, 2022

PhD defense: Anoeska becomes dr. Van de Moosdijk

Today Anoeska defended her PhD thesis in de Agnieten kapel in Amsterdam - just in time before stricter COVID-19 measures were announced, so there was even the possibility for (sit down) drinks and a proper celebration afterwards.



Anoeska passed the defense with flying colors - which is very fitting for a thesis that incorporates so many fluorescent proteins in so many chapters (and so many different mouse strains - kudos for taking on and finishing that challenging project!).
You can find the thesis here and all mouse models (two still unpublished, but we are working on that) should become available via Jackson labs soon.

Since Anoeska still works at SILS, our ways will not part - but with the thesis out of the way we can now only talk about other things! Congratulations, dr. Van de Moosdijk!

16 November, 2021

Wntlab You Tube channel launch

The lab officially turns 8 years old today. A good reason to launch our YouTube channel with one of the first videos we ever made from data produced in the lab by Anoeska van de Moosdijk: A bifurcating terminal end bud with WNT-responsive stem cells scattered throughout. This experiment ultimately resulted in one grant, three new mouse models and the PhD thesis of Anoeska!



Why You Tube? Well, as scientists we are the ultimate content creators!
Find us here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLiTXnmwnKAyM9HqVCwlaNg.

Still a bit empty for now (and fear not, as soon as we have enough subscribers and content we can apply for a shorter channel name), but we think this will be the best place to drop some pretty movies that otherwise only ever end up in a slide show that too few people will ever see.

1 November, 2021

#BreastCancerAwarenessMonth (2)

The University of Amsterdam Press Communications Office (UvA Persvoorlichting) highlighted the lab on their Instagram account. This time, there was time and space (albeit in 15 second snippets and soundbites) to stress our fundamental research.

Instagram stories are fleeting, but luckily we received all of the original materials so we can also share them here on our own website. We are quite happy with the recordings of our dynamic lab life (and equally happy that the orange G buffer on the vortex made it into the final cut).



With these promotional materials we really no longer have an excuse to not start a lab You Tube channel.

14 October, 2021

#BreastCancerAwarenessMonth (1)

Renée was featured in a newspaper article in "Het Reformatorisch Dagblad" because of Breast Cancer Awareness Week.

She said many interesting things about the importance of basic breast cancer research, but mainly the blurbs that came closer to the patient made it into the final article.

Perhaps it is good to know that when we talk to journalists we always stress that we are "not that type of doctor" and therefore we have to be careful in answering some questions as we cannot and should not give medical advise or make statements on treatment and outcome.

11 October, 2021

Nacht van de poezie

Our artist in residence, Rosa Schogt, had the honor of being the opening act of the 38th Dutch Poetry Night. One of the poems she read was "Het verband tussen snelheid en massa" (The link between speed and mass), which she wrote earlier this year inspired by our work. As you can tell from the audience response, this poem needs to sink in.

2 October, 2021

Goodbye Saskia!

We had dinner in De Polder to say goodbye to Saskia, who is moving on to the next step in her career. She will start a new job at Ocello in October.

Nika (who is very happy at uniQure and Anoeska (who is preparing for her defense in November) also joined us. For some reason Renée is the only one in focus in the picture, but a good time was had by all!

16 September, 2021

Review chapter out online

A new review, in which Saskia and Renée zoom in on the working mechanism of the WNT/CTNNB1 destruction complex, came out online today. It looks like the DOI has not been activated yet, but you can access the review (titled "Zooming in on the WNT/CTNNB1 Destruction Complex: Functional Mechanistic Details with Implications for Therapeutic Targeting") here:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F164_2021_522.pdf

We are quite happy with how it turned out and are curious to hear what you think.

13 September, 2021

Goodbye students and welcome Anna!

Before the start of the academic year 2021-2022, we said goodbye to our students (Omayma and Uliana gave their talk before the summer break and handed in their reports, Melanie and Jenny presented their work today and are wrapping up the writing and Jobana will wrap up this month).



We celebrated the end of their pandemic, largely in silico internships with lunch at the Polder and two new group shots, including one in our new composition: Anna joined us today for her 9 month HLO internship.

Welcome Anna and happy trails to everyone who is moving on to the next steps!

1 September, 2021

Interview with Saskia about her research visit to NIH

Who knew? As it turns out, some Fulbright scholarships are sponsored by Elsevier. For this reason, Saskia was interviewed by Elsevier Connect about her view on scientific research and her visit to the NIH, where she spent some time in the Lebensohn lab for the final stages of her PhD thesis research.

You can read the interview here.

4 August, 2021

New pre-print

Just before the summer break we published a new pre-print.

Titled "Hyperactive WNT/CTNNB1 signaling induces a competing cell proliferation and epidermal differentiation response in the mouse mammary epithelium", this study uses a 3D primary mouse mammary organoid culture system to study the immediate (early or direct) consequences of hyper activating the WNT/CTNNB1 response in the mammary gland.

As we know from cumulative work in the field and as also consistently supported by our own experiments, the mammary epithelium is quite sensitive to the absolute levels of WNT/CTNNB1 signaling. In this study we tweak apart the molecular and cellular responses of the mammary epithelium apart in response to low, medium and high levels of WNT/CTNNB1 signaling.

Now let us hope that this study finds a permanent peer-reviewed home (the first rejection landed on our desk when we returned from our summer holidays, so we are now digesting the reviewer comments).

Kudos to everyone in the lab who has contributed to this work over the past 8 (!) years, including former technician Amber Zeeman and former postdocs Larissa Mourao and Katrin Wiese, as well as multiple students who have worked on this project over the years during their MSc internships (Anika, Lieve, Isabel).

28 July, 2021

New publication: Paper accepted in eLife and out online

We are very excited to announce that after a long and strenuous, but altogether very positive and constructive review process, our study "Quantitative live-cell imaging and computational modelling shed new light on endogenous WNT/CTNNB1 signaling dynamics" by De Man et al. has been accepted for publication by eLife!

We are editing the proofs as we speak, but the paper is already out online and can be accessed here: https://elifesciences.org/articles/66440.

This tour de force was led by first author Saskia de Man, who is currently on a research visit in the United States. This means that we had to have transatlantic cake moments to celebrate, but that didn’t diminish our joy (and relief). Tanne van der Wal also contributed to the final version of this work, where we combine quantitative live cell imaging and computational biology to determine the absolute amounts and complex states of endogenous wildtype CTNNB1 and an oncogenic S45F mutant. This was only possible thanks to a collaboration with our colleagues Gooitzen Zwanenburg and Mark Hink. Kudos to Saskia for integrating all of our expertise and staying on top of it all.

We are also very excited that our artist in residence, Rosa Schogt, composed a poem inspired by this work for the occasion, which we are officially launching today to accompany the paper (in Dutch, below):



A Twitter thread with more details can be found here.

For the WNT aficionados: One thing our data reveals is that, contrary to our expectations, the multivalent destruction complex might only have limited occupancy (i.e. rapid turnover and release) of CTNNB1, with higher occupancy only being detectable for the S45F mutant form of CTNNB1.

We draw an analogy between the destruction complex and an old fashioned waterwheel: "Even if the multivalent destruction complex offers multiple CTNNB1 binding sites, occupancy at any one time might be low, due to the continuous and high turnover of CTNNB1. In this respect, the CTNNB1 bindings sites in the destruction complex could be envisioned to act similar to the wooden vanes in the paddle wheel of an old-fashioned watermill: like the water in the analogous example, CTNNB1 would be continuously scooped up (for phosphorylation) and dropped off (for degradation)."

We were afraid that the figure we drew to illustrate this concept would not be deemed quite scientific enough, so we only included it in one of our rebuttals (thank you, Reviewer 1, for liking this analogy). So here it is for the more visually inclined:

9 July, 2021

The very first Wntlab PhD defense: Nika becomes dr. Heijmans

On Wednesday morning Nika successfully defended her PhD thesis, thereby becoming the first dr. to come out of the lab. Congratulations Nika on such a beautiful thesis and a job well done!

Luckily, the COVID-19 measures were alleviated just in time for a hybrid defense: while seating was limited, the ceremony did take place in the beautiful old Agnietenkapel in the center of Amsterdam with a beadle and two paranymphs. Two external committee members joined us from Utrecht via livestream, while the president of the committee and the three other committee members along with the promotor and co-promotor were physically present. And, most importantly, some close family, friends and (former) colleagues could attend. After such a long time of online only we are counting our blessings that we got to enjoy something that came really close to a good old fashioned PhD defense!

7 July, 2021

Lab BBQ

Tanne hosted a lab BBQ to celebrate summer and the (upcoming) end of the BSc and MSc internships. This was the first time we were all together, timed with scientific precision in the week in which COVID-19 levels were at their lowest (that was fun while it lasted).

The students outnumbered other lab members this year, requiring flexibility from all involved. All things considered, we think we have been able to offer decent internship experiences under the circumstances (looking at you, pandemic).


Roasting marshmallows brings out the best (and inner child) in everyone!

7 July, 2021

Coffee break and impromptu lab picture

We had our first coffee break with the entire lab in the new constellation. We can only imagine what exciting development will still occur on this patch of land that makes it look like we live somewhere out in the desert or on a building site (we have high hopes for a Friends style fountain, but it looks like it might just be plain old grass). In either case, the wall did allow us to soak in the sun and pose for a socially distanced lab picture. Let’s hope this is the last 1.5 meters one!


Thank you Eike for taking the picture!

2 June, 2021

Marleen joins the lab as a new PhD student

Today, Marleen started as a PhD student in the lab. She will work on dissecting how tissue specific WNT signalling is initiated and interpreted. Hopefully in the next few years, we will solve some longstanding questions together.

Welcome Marleen!

1 June, 2021

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