Welcome To
Applied Stem Cell Technologies
About Us
Every day we are pushing the boundaries of the stem cell research field. With one goal: bridging the gap between engineering and medicine. That’s where we make our impact.
Our research topics
Our technology
Team leaders
Passier’s research focuses on cardiac disease modelling based on human pluripotent stem cells, which have the capacity to form any cell type of the human body. In recent years, defined protocols for generating specialized cardiac cells and cardiovascular progenitor cells from human pluripotent stem cells have been established in his group. At the University of Twente his group combines human pluripotent stem cell technologies (controlled differentiation to cardiovascular cells and genetic manipulation) and micro-engineering technologies to build innovative highly advanced “heart-on-chip” systems (either 2D or 3D) and cardiac organoid-like tissues for modelling cardiac disease and unravelling underlying molecular mechanisms. In addition, his group aims to develop multifunctional high-throughput technologies and platforms for drug screening and personalized medicine.
Robert Passier – Head of Department
Broersen’s research aims to reveal the mechanisms of long-distance interaction between the gut and the brain making use of organ-on-chip technologies. By exploiting the differentiation potential of pluripotent stem cells and co-cultures with intestinal microbiota, we recreate the gut brain axis and culture these onto custom-designed and fabricated microfluidic devices to acknowledge the specific individual requirements of the mini-organs we recreate in terms of microenvironmental conditions. While we mostly focus on healthy gut-brain physiology, we intensively collaborate with various parties looking at the impact of gut-brain communication on a range of brain-related pathologies including multiple sclerosis, autism spectrum disorders, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease as well as the impact of various nutritional factors. By combining advanced complex organ-on-chip technologies with more traditional biochemical and biophysical read-outs we seek to address the specific mechanisms behind healthy and pathological gut-brain communication.
Kerensa Broersen – Full Professor
Van der Meer focuses on the technical development of ‘next-generation’ organs-on-chips, by controlled engineering of three-dimensional tissues and by their active perfusion with human blood. Moreover, he aims to develop ‘personalized’ organs-on-chips by integration of human stem cell-derived tissues and by controlling culture parameters based on personal health data. Finally, he has a major interest in the miniaturization, standardization, multiplexing and automation of organs-on-chips by developing modular systems and by controlling fluid flow through microfluidic valves.
Andries van der Meer – Full Professor
Schwach’s research focuses on:
- hPSC differentiation towards multiple cardiac cells.
- Cardiac tissue engineering using bioprinting.
- Cardiac disease modeling, such as a heart-on-chip model for arrhythmia.
- CRISPR/Cas9 editing technologies, including pooled and arrayed screening approaches
- Multi-organ-on-chip models, for example a heart-brain model.
- Cardiotoxicity.
Verena Schwach – Assistant Professor
