Developmental, Stem Cell & Cancer Biology

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. Stay tuned for when the episode launches later this year!

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.

25 March, 2025

Hubrecht Symposium

Thijs was one of the co-organizers (and a session chair) of the 2025 Hubrecht Symposium "Developmental Biology - Morphogenesis and cellmate decisions". For some reason, Renée forgot to register and therefore could not attend, but the lab was well represented with poster presentations by Jasper and Joëlle.

13 March, 2025

Welcome to our new BSc students

Three new BSc students joined the lab for their bachelor projects this year. Fé will work with Rhanna on the P19 gastruloid model, while Jan and David will work with Jasper on building an atlas for mammary gland development.

1 February, 2025

Research visits

Not all science is taking place in Amsterdam in the first few months of 2025, as Marleen is in Sweden for a 6-week research visit with our collaborator Claudio Cantu and Jasper is in Leuven to spend a week with our collaborator Colinda Scheele.

17 January, 2025

Welcome to our new MSc students

Two new students joined the lab for their first MSc internship.

Isa will work under the supervision of Thijs on the role of WNT signaling in breast cancer.
Kees will work under the supervision of Joëlle on the role of WNT, BMP and NODAL signaling in symmetry breaking in gastruloids.

10 January, 2025

Renée promoted to professor in Stem Cell and Cancer Biology

Starting the first of January, Renée was promoted to professor of Stem Cell and Cancer Biology (Dutch "leeropdracht": Fundamenteel Stamcel- en Kankeronderzoek).

A personal highlight, for sure, but also a lab milestone and something that would not have been possible without past mentors as well as current and former lab members.

Onwards!

1 January, 2025

Buon Natale

Christmas came early this year (although the upcoming break is definitely welcome after a busy semester).

After the annual lab cleaning, we had a lovely Italian themed dinner. A great initiative from the our PhD students, graciously hosted by Thijs. From fresh bruschetta to a seemingly endless tiramisu. Luckily the whole lab could make it.

It was the perfect way to end the year in good spirits.


at least some of us got the xmas sweater memo

17 December, 2024

Travel grant for Marleen

We are excited that Marleen was awarded an LNVH Advancing Women in Biology Grant, which will help cover the costs towards a short research visit to the lab of Claudio Cantu in Sweden. We foresee exciting new data (and for some of us: northern lights) in the future.

Congratulations Marleen!

5 December, 2024

Bachelorweek fall 2024

Students in their final year of high school in the Netherlands are close to deciding about their follow up studies. Time to inform everyone about the exciting opportunities that the UvA has to offer!

The week started with an online webinar on Monday, during which we introduced the BSc program Biomedical Sciences to 250 online attendees. Handy and convenient perhaps, but nothing beets soaking up the real atmosphere at a traditional "Open Dag".

On Friday 22 November, Science Park opened its doors to high school students and their families for the fall edition of our "studie voorlichting" (information activities) on site. In addition to practical information about the goal, job prospects and the content of our BSc program Biomedical Sciences (by Renée), potential future students had the opportunity to attend different mini lectures on basic stem cell and cancer research (by Thijs) and microbes (by Stanley Brul) - as well as to the information market, where they got up to date information straight from the best source: our very own students.

22 November, 2024

Thijs gives a talk at the SILS technology day

Thijs gave a talk about single cell RNA sequencing at the SILS technology day, highlighting the current status and possibilities of the technique with a tiny bit of biology sprinkled in to highlight our very own first single cell experiment.

20 November, 2024

First shared lab meetings with AMOLF

This fall, we started our official collaboration with AMOLF. We already did some work together with the labs of Sander Tans and Jeroen van Zon in the past (in fact, a first manuscript was submitted this month), but with the start of Jasper’s PhD thesis research things have now been formalized for the upcoming few years.
On 12 November, Renée joined the celebratory 75 years of AMOLF symposium at Felix Meritis and on Friday, Caitrin and Renée joined Jasper for the AMOLF organoid work discussion. Exiting times ahead for our shared project on mammary gland morphogenesis, but with plenty of other promising possibilities to connect in the future as well, both for our group and for the rest of SILS!

15 November, 2024

Marleen presents poster at Dutch Chromatin Meeting

Marleen attended the Dutch chromatin meeting in Utrecht and presented a poster on her work on GRHL and PR signaling.

15 November, 2024

Graduation ceremony BSc Bomedical Sciences

In September, Renée started a 3-year term as Opleidingsdirecteur Biomedische Wetenschappen (program director of the BSc Biomedical Sciences). Among the different tasks and responsibilities that come with this exciting and dynamic role, is the graduation ceremony. This year, approximately 100 students from our program graduated, with more than 80 students picking up their diplomas in person - joined by family and friends for the occasion.

9 November, 2024

FNWI PubQuiz

On Tuesday evening we made our way to De Oerknal for the annual FNWI PubQuiz. Once again we had to split the lab into two teams.
"No(dal)oubt about it we are going to W(i)n(t)" did not have the best pronounceable team name, but did place itself in the top 3 at the midway point. Alas, it was all downhill from there as the concentration span of our second team ("Memory Glands") turned out to be stronger. They won the (friendly) internal competition and ultimately came in at a 12th place in the final tally.
Nothing to be ashamed of, considering the fact that there were 25 teams and good times were had by all.

5 November, 2024

Labuitje

Our annual lab day out coincided with the 11th anniversary of the lab. We stayed in Amsterdam and got 10,000 steps in as we made our way to the various locations of the program that had a little bit of everything.
We started out at the beautiful Potgieterzaal in the Amsterdam University Library. Here, we had a training session on different communication styles and listening skills. After all, solid team building never hurt anyone. In Dutch we call this "het nuttige met het aangename verenigen". We got to know each other a little better on a different level - and now it is up to all of us to try and actively put things we have learned in practice!

We then made our way over to De Plantage for lunch, followed by a trip to the Wereldmuseum (formerly Tropenmuseum). We caught one of the last days of the sari exhibit and now know everything about martial arts. The rest of the museum felt a bit empty and still in search of its new identity as it goes through its decolonization stages.

After this, it was off to a Jeu de Boules bar where we had a friendly competition. Because somebody has to come in in first and fourth place, suffice it to say that Thijs and Renée won but that great fun and conversations were had by all.

Thank you Thijs for organizing! Jasper and Rhanna have already volunteered themselves for next year.

1 November, 2024

Congratulations Dr. Van der Wal!

On 18 October, Tanne successfully defended her thesis as the fifth PhD student to graduate from the lab. It was a proper Dutch PhD defense, with a nice lekenpraatje prior to the start of the official ceremony and 10 stellingen (propositions) to accompany the thesis.



from top left to bottom right: lekenpraatje, a good metaphor never hurt anyone, dr. Bjorn von Eyss opening the opposition, hand over of the official diploma at the end of the ceremony.

The defense took place in the Aula of the University of Amsterdam and was a lively discussion between Tanne and the six opponents. Thanks to Marten Smidt for acting as second promotor and Marten Postma for being co-promotor, thereby further substantiating our scientific collaboration.
A special thanks to our outside PhD thesis committee members for traveling to Amsterdam, especially to Dr. Bjorn von Eyss for coming all the way from Jena in Germany for a 10 am seminar and the PhD thesis defense.

PhD defenses are also always a mini lab reunion and it was great to see so many former lab members and students, including the ones who have contributed to the work in this thesis!

18 October, 2024

Weekend van de Wetenschap

What better way to spend a Saturday than to talk to the general public about how cool science is? Luckily, 5 October was the annual Science Park Open Day (part of the National Science Weekend or Weekend van de Wetenschap).


As always, we were set up with an interactive information stand to talk about the beauty of developmental biology (this year our visitors could look down the microscope at gastruloids as well as different stages of breast development). Crowds not pictured on purpose. Lab coats were removed five minutes after the picture was taken because it was way too freaking hot.

Thijs, Caitrín and Renée casually slipped in the importance of basic scientific research ("fundamenteel onderzoek") in the life sciences for all of the exciting discoveries that can (and still are to) be made in the area of human health and disease.

No matter what the Dutch government currently seems to think is enough to spend on science and education (i.e. way too little), the broad range and variety of inquisitive visitors of all ages and backgrounds that passed by were proof of the fact that humans are intrinsically curious and eager to learn. And we too learned a lot from all of the different questions we received!

We were totally worn out by the time it was 5 pm, but will be sure to return again next year!

5 October, 2024

Nature reports on Lowlands Science

If you look closely, Joëlle can be seen on this photo accompanying the HTML version of a piece in Nature (for some mysterious reason the PDF version decided to cut her off at the elbow), which highlights the activities taken part at Lowlands Science.


(left) online version (right) PDF

As we already reported earlier, DSCCB lab members have been hitting the festival circuit this year as part of the outreach activities of our NWO-XL consortium in collaboration with NEMO Kennislink and the ZonMW PSIDER consortia to get input from the general public on ongoing (and future) research with gastruloids.

3 October, 2024

Two symposia in the midst of teaching

In the midst of the busiest teaching season, Thijs and Renée found (i.e. magically created) time to travel to Germany for science.

Thijs presented a poster at the Spemann-Mangold Centennial Symposium "Self-Organization in Biology", which was held in Freiburg from 16-19 September. Renée gave an invited talk at the WNT meeting, organized by the German WNT signaling consortium at the DKFZ in Heidelberg.

Good times!

30 September, 2024

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