New diabetes drug-screening model available

Lab name change

We are changing out name from the Autoimmune Genetics Laboratory to the Translational Immunology Laboratory. This new name better reflects our research interests, which have moved broader than just autoimmunity and have also taken on a strong translational angle.

Within the Translational Immunology laboratory we will have two major research divisions: Discovery Immunology and Applied Immunology. Discovery Immunology will focus on unravelling more of the basic biology of the immune system, with an emphasis on regulatory T cells and the process of diabetes. Appled Immunology will focus on the human immune system, containing our immune phenotyping platform and gene discovery program. Advances in each division are expected to feed into each other.

VIB immune phenotyping platform open for industry collaboration

(Yet another) reason to vaccinate your child

Vaccination may be one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time. Smallpox eradication alone probably saves 3 million lives a year, and the routine childhood vaccines save another 3 million lives a year. Vaccines are so effective and successful, in fact, that they are no longer seen with the awe they deserve. The virulent fear of infectious disease has faded so completely forgotten that clueless celebrities are happy to campaign against vaccines based on the incorrect claims of a discredited  fraud.

Take measles, for example. While often dismissed as a harmless childhood disease, measles can be a killer. It is extremely infectious virus, putting most other viruses to shame for just how incredibly infectious it is. For children or adults in poor health (immunocompromised or malnourished), measles has a mortality rate of 30%. Even under the best scenario, measles can cause blindness and brain damage and kill 0.2% of those infected. 0.2% doesn't sound that much, but consider that in the USA without vaccination we would have 3-4 million cases a year - that is 8000 infant deaths being prevented every year.

Well, it turns out that measles is probably even worse than this. A new study demonstrates that measles infection increases the risk of dying of other diseases (scientific paper here, lay verion here). When measles vaccines are introduced, it is not only deaths from measles that are eliminated - deaths from a wide set of childhood infections dramatically drop. In fact, rather than "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", surviving measles seems to suppress the immune system for several years, making children more likely to die from alternative diseases. Vaccination gives protection against measles without the risks of infection and without the immunosuppression of infection - a great "win-win" situation.

Chronisch Vermoeidheidssyndroom Uitgelicht

CVS, wat als het u overkomt?

(interview by Veto)

The absurdities of animal ethics applications

I am a strong supporter of animal rights. I would like to see more animal rights enshrined in the law. Although I am vegetarian and do not eat animals, I do perform animal research - because there is real medical value that can only be gained through animal experiments. To rectify the discontinuity between these positions, I support the animal ethics procedures, where every experiment to be performed on an animal needs to be carefully examined by an animal welfare committee prior to approval, and only important experiments with the minimal pain necessary can be performed. This principle should be strengthened and even extended to other instutitions that work with animals, such as farms, pet stores and zoos.

That said, I do not support the massive amounts of paperwork that are required to run an animal research laboratory. This is the paperwork that I needed to submit just to determine which forms need to be filled out in order for me to breed mice:

That right - that pile of paper is the pre-application just to breed mice, not to do any actual experiments. Any person can buy mice at a pet store - put a male and a female in a cage and they breed, yet no forms are needed. Did you know that mice even breed in the wild - and without filling out forms first!

Animal ethics application forms should be about ensuring animals are not mistreated, they should not be a covert attempt to shut down all animal research by making it impractical for scientists to run their experiments. By making animal ethics applications so absurdly bureaucratic, they actually decrease the scrutiny and fail to do what they are meant to achieve - decrease the suffering of animals. A simple stream-lined procedure would actually increase animal welfare while still allowing key medical research to be performed.

There is nothing ethical about a moratorium on genome editing

In recent weeks, two comment pieces have been published calling for a moratorium on germ-line genome editing. Germ-line genome editing is now feasible, even easy, thanks to new genetic engineering tools such as CrispR-Cas9. It has the potential to fix genetic diseases such as Huntington's, severe combined immunodeficiency and cystic fibrosis. So why is there suddenly a call for a moratorium on curing these diseases? Are there new scientific results questioning the safety or efficacy? No. In fact new studies are making the approach more and more realistic every day. This moratorium call is just a commentary, not based on any new science. The only reason it made headlines is that the two commentaries were published in the leading journals, one in Science and one in Nature, and because the 23 authors include some very preeminent scientists (mandatory to have your comment pieces published in Science and Nature). This was widely reported as "Scientists seek ban on editing human genome", and I expect that various bans will indeed soon be implemented across the world.

My question - as a scientist who works on genome editing using these very tools - is why? Why is there a call for a ban? The case has simply not been made that there is any ethical conundrum. The "problem" is that these cures would not only cure the disease in the child, but would also prevent the disease being passed on to their children. And why exactly is that a bad thing? "Future generations" - yadda yadda. We make decisions that influence future generations every single day. Do you think future generations will complain about not having cystic fibrosis? If need be, they could easily engineer the mutation back in, not that anyone would. You know what else potentially causes germ-line mutations? X-rays, but we don't ban them because the benefits are very large and the risks are very small. Even poverty causes heritable modification to the genome, so let's not pretend that we've never made a decision that alters unborn generations.

To me, all this moralising is more of the same that we have heard for decades about "designer babies". I'm sick and tired of hearing about the hypothetical of chosing a baby's eye colour. That is probably never going to happen, it would be easy to ban if it did start to happen, and is it really any worse than the current practise of grooming children for beauty pagents or gymnastics from an early age?

The hypotheticals that bioethicists seem to be overwhelmed about always seem to be in the indefinite future. So I'd like to give a here-and-now question to the authors of those comment pieces, and to bioethicists in general. Is it ethical to withhold medicine to children today, simply because of some ill-defined unease you have? The picture below is of a child with Olmsted disease, which we work on in the lab. Warning: the picture is not nice, but this is exactly the type of disease which could be potentially cured with the new genome editing tools.

Olmsted disease is caused by a single base-pair mutation in the gene TRPV3. It is a prime candidate for genome editing cures, but any cure would run the "risk" of not just correcting the mutation in the skin, but also of correcting the mutation in the germ-line. Is it ethical to cure such a child at the "risk" of also curing their future children? I would argue that not only is it ethical, but it is unethical to not try.

There are horrible diseases which strike down children that may never have any feasible cure other than genome editing. To not pursue that sole avenue of research would be a disgrace, an ethical failure of the highest magnitude. I, for one, will ignore any self-proclaimed "moral authority" who tells me not to work for a cure of these diseases. Unless my research is proclaimed illegal I will continue my work - and if it is proclaimed illegal I'll campaign against the unethical laws that shut down the sole hope of families with incurable genetic diseases. Ethical action requires a careful consideration of the consequences, but equally, inaction also requires a a consideration of the ethical consequences. Unless a strong case is made that the consequences of genome-editing for future generations are worse than the consequences of not using genome-editing for this generation, it would be unethical to abide by a moratorium.

Evoluation in action: baby sting-ray edition

Not just an excuse for a cute picture - look at the hind limbs that develop in the baby sting-rays - completely non-functional in the adult, but you can see that they are part of the developmental process. Evolution is messy, and always works from what is pre-existing, rather than what would be ideal.

Neurodegenerative mouse strain discovered

Sometimes science works by chance.

In a mouse colony that we were breeding to study myeloproliferative disease, just by chance we had a few mice that just started shaking. Seizing the chance to study these further, we found out that our colony had generated a spontaneous mutation in the gene Mbp, a structural component of the insulating layer that keeps nerves insulated (in the same way that the plastic coating of metal wires is required for electricity cables). Without insulation of their nerves, the mice developed an erratic shaking and later on developed seizures. This work ended up revealing new aspects of the regulation of nerve insulation genes, and has been published in the journal Brain Research.

Read more: Staats, Pombal, Schönefeldt, Van Helleputte, Maurin, Dresselaers, Govaerts, Himmelreich, Van Leuven, Van Den Bosch, Dooley J, Humblet-Baron*, Liston*.Transcriptional upregulation of myelin components in spontaneous myelin basic protein-deficient mice. Brain Res. 2015 in press.

New cause for early-onset lupus discovered

In a new study out by the Autoimmune Genetics Laboratory, we have discovered a new genetic cause for early-onset systemic lupus erythematosus - mutation in the gene IFIH1. In 2014, mutations of this gene were independently found to cause the neurodegenerative disease Aicardi-Goutières syndrome (AGS). Despite lupus and AGS manifesting as clinically different symptoms, this study shows that mutation in the same gene causes both diseases. The mutation in IFIH1 works via driving excessive production of the cytokine IFN alpha, so this discovery opens up the possibility for treatment once anti-IFN alpha antibodies (currently in development) are approved for use. 

Read more: Van Eyck, De Somer, Pombal, Bornschein, Frans, Humblet-Baron, Moens, de Zegher, Bossuyt, Wouters* & Liston*. IFIH1 mutation causes systemic lupus erythematosus with selective IgA-deficiency. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2015, in press.

If you would like to support our clinical research, and allow us to take on more cases like this one, you can make a tax-deductable donation the Ped IMID fund, by transferring to IBAN-number BE45 7340 1941 7789, BIC-code: KREDBEBB with the label "voor EBD-FOPIIA-O2010".