van Amerongen Lab - Developmental, Stem Cell & Cancer Biology

associate professor and group leader
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Renée received her MSc from the Vrije Universiteit (1999, cum laude) and her PhD from the University of Amsterdam (2005, also cum laude). She did her PhD thesis research with Anton Berns at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and was a postdoc with Roel Nusse at Stanford University.
In 2013 she set up her lab at the UvA, where she was appointed as MacGillavry fellow and tenure track assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor (with tenure) in 2017. Renée is an NWO VIDI laureate (2014) with more than 20 years of active research experience in Wnt signaling. She is also an elected member of the organizing committee of the European Network for Breast Development and Cancer labs and an editorial board member of the Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia. (complete CV here, updated 09/2022)

assistant professor

Thijs received his PhD from the Vrije Universiteit (VU university) in Amsterdam, where he worked on teratogenic effects of environmental pollutants on embryonic development. He did his postdoctoral research at Cancer Research UK and the Francis Crick institute in London in the lab of Caroline Hill. Here, he studied how embryonic signalling pathways control early development. As a research associate at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in Richard White’s lab he developed new models for pancreatic cancer. Thijs joined the lab in February 2021, bringing with him over 15 years experience at the crossroad of developmental and cancer biology.

technician

After obtaining an MSc degree at Leiden University in Molecular & Cellular Biology, Ingeborg started work as a technician in the lab of Vincent Christoffels at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (Amsterdam UMC) in April 2012. Focussing on development of the heart and cardiac repair after myocardial infarction, she performed molecular and in vivo work. Ingeborg joined the group in October 2020 as a technician, combining lab management support with experimental and technical support for ongoing research projects in the lab.

PhD student

Marleen received her BSc from Utrecht University in 2018. In 2021 she gaduated from the Cancer, Stem Cell and Developmental Biology program at the same University. During her Masters she performed internships in the Netherlands Cancer Institute and University Medical Center in Utrecht. She joined the lab in June 2021 and works on the (epi)genetic regulation of Wnt signalling.

technician

Anna joined the lab in February 2023. She will help jump start the NWO-XL consortium grant, as part of which we will study the role of WNT, Nodal and BMP signaling using 3D gastruloids as a model system for early mammalian development. Anna will spend part of her time at the NKI, where she will work with our collaborator, Tineke Lenstra.

PhD student

Tanne received her BSc and MSc from the University of Amsterdam. She did her first BSc internship in the lab and later returned for a brief period as a guest researcher. During her MSc she performed internships at the Hubrecht Institute and in the lab of Chris Bakal at the ICR (London, UK). Tanne joined the lab in October 2019 as a PhD student and uses advanced microscopy techniques to further elucidate molecular mechanisms of Wnt signaling.

Carlos Arroyo
MSc student

Carlos joined the lab in January 2023 to perform his research project on transcription factors in breast cancer under the supervision of Thijs van Boxtel. He got his Biotechnology BSc in León, Spain, in 2022 and enrolled in the Biomedical Science MSc at the UvA (Developmental and Therapeutic Biology track). He has performed previous internships in the reproductive field, synthetic biology and microbiology food control.

Michiel Kayaert
HLO student

Michiel joined the lab in September 2022. He works under the supervision of Thijs on developing novel tools to visualize and quantify WNT and BMP/Nodal signaling.

Eva Prevaes
MSc student

Eva joined the lab in January 2023 for her MSc internship. She is currently in her first year of the master Biomedical Science at the University of Amsterdam (Cell Biology and Advanced Microscopy track). She works under the supervision of Tanne to study how cells balance the distribution of CTNNB1 across signaling and adhesion pools.

Jeltje Rommens
MSc student

Jeltje is doing a dry lab internship as part of a collaboration between our group and Martijs Jonker. Under the supervision of Martijs and co-supervised by Marleen and Renee, Jeltje is performing bioinformatics analysis to identify the gene regulatory mechanisms that underlie tissue-specific WNT/CTNNB1 signaling as part of her major Big Biomedical Data Analysis.

Emma Schram
MSc student

Emma joined the lab in January 2023 for her MSc internship. She is currently in her first year of the master Biomedical Science at the University of Amsterdam (Developmental and Therapeutic Biology track). During her Bachelors she performed internships at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (Amsterdam UMC) and the Utrecht University Medical Center (Utrecht UMC). She works under the supervision of Marleen. Emma will focus on making transcription factor knockouts in cell lines to study effects on development of breast cancer in luminal cells.

Marit Steur
BSc student

Marit joined the lab in February 2023 for a 5-month internship as part of the UvA BSc Biomedische Wetenschappen (Frontiers in Medical Biology specialization). Under the supervision of Thijs van Boxtel, she will be working on visualizing Nodal signalling using P19 cells as a 3D model for early mammalian development.

Aoming Sun
MSc student

Aoming is doing a dry lab internship as part of a collaboration between our group and Marten Postma. Under the supervision of Marten and co-supervised by Tanne and Renee, Aoming will work to improve our image analysis and cell segmentation pipelines as part of the MSc joint degree Bioinformatics and Systems Biology.