Better predicting and recognizing intellectual disability. A sharper, AI-enhanced MRI scan without pixelation. Reducing chemotherapy-related damage through exercise and a protein-rich diet. Testing whether medicines are safe without using animal models. These are just a few of the nine research projects for which talented early-career researchers at UMC Utrecht have received a prestigious Veni grant. By looking beyond the boundaries of their own disciplines, they are helping improve healthcare for today and for tomorrow.
A person is more than the organ that happens to be affected by disease. Sometimes researchers need to look beyond the single part that appears to be “broken.” Doing so requires not only scientific expertise, but also curiosity, perseverance, and creativity. Nine early-career researchers at UMC Utrecht have been recognized for exactly those qualities with a Veni grant.
Each year, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) awards Veni grants to outstanding and innovative researchers, giving them the opportunity to further develop their own research ideas over the next three years. This year, nine UMC Utrecht researchers received this prestigious award, worth up to €320,000 each. We are proud to introduce these researchers and the groundbreaking work they are pursuing:
Healthcare decisions increasingly rely on data from electronic health records and registries, especially when traditional clinical trials are not feasible. However, studies based on such data are vulnerable to design and analysis errors, which can lead to misleading conclusions.
In this project, Wouter van Amsterdam will develop a digital research assistant that helps researchers conduct observational studies more carefully and transparently. The assistant automatically checks whether key design choices are consistent and highlights assumptions and uncertainties, helping to improve the reliability of evidence derived from real-world healthcare data.
“I hope to develop an open, validated AI assistant that makes research using healthcare data more accessible and more reliable,” he says. “This will help healthcare professionals make better-informed decisions about which treatment works best for which patient.”
A brain aneurysm is a life-threatening condition of an artery in the head. Aneurysm rupture may cause a fatal stroke. Heritable factors are essential in the development of a brain aneurysm. Researchers have discovered many genes that contribute, each one piece of the puzzle. But development of a brain aneurysm was found to be complicated with not one, but many puzzles involved.
There is currently no way to link each piece to the right puzzle. In this study, Mark Bakker will develop and use such a method. “Only then can we better predict who is at increased risk of developing a brain aneurysm and improve treatment for patients,” he says.
Bakker’s goal extends beyond advancing brain aneurysm research. “I hope this approach will eventually become a new standard, not only for brain aneurysms, but for research into inherited diseases in general.”
Intellectual disability is one of the most common conditions in pediatrics, but parents often receive little information about what caused it and how their child may develop. In this project Nathalie Claessens is reanalyzing MRI scans, metabolic test results, and genetic data using new techniques that reveal early brain development.
By linking these findings to children’s everyday functioning, physicians may be able to predict developmental outcomes at a much younger age. “My goal is to gain new insights into the brain development of children with developmental delays,” Claessens says. “Ultimately, I hope this will give parents greater clarity about their child’s future.”
Some chemotherapies can damage skeletal muscle and the heart, leading to fatigue, reduced tolerance of cancer treatment, and even chronic heart failure. A potential underlying mechanism is mitochondrial dysfunction, affecting the energy factories of our cells.
Preclinical studies suggest that exercise combined with a high-protein diet may attenuate or prevent this damage. Anouk Hiensch will investigate the effects of a combined exercise and nutritional intervention on chemotherapy-induced mitochondrial dysfunction in patients with lymphoma.
To do so, she will use a unique, non-invasive technique: phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy. “I hope to show that exercise and a protein-rich diet can reduce damage to the heart and muscles,” Hiensch says. “Ultimately, I hope lifestyle interventions will become a standard part of cancer treatment.”
Clinical research is essential to ensure patients have access to high-quality healthcare. Many clinical drug trials encounter difficulties in recruiting a sufficient number of participants and are therefore terminated before the study is completed.
Early termination of clinical trials results in insufficient evidence to inform decision making. Therefore, Amos de Jong will clarify which trial procedures – such as methods related to participant outreach, the format of the informed consent form, and flexible follow-up appointments – are key drivers of participation.
“Ultimately, I hope the results of this research will help make drug trials more efficient,” De Jong says. “My goal is to help patients gain faster access to effective treatments.”
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major cause of pneumonia in infants worldwide. New prevention strategies protect infants using a single antibody, but the virus can change and escape this protection.
In this project, Natalie Mazur will examine whether combining several antibodies or designing one antibody that targets multiple parts of the virus can stop the virus from escaping. She will study how RSV changes when exposed to antibodies and use this knowledge to design stronger, more resilient antibodies. The aim is long-lasting and affordable RSV prevention for every child.
“My dream is that every child, anywhere in the world, can be protected against RSV,” Mazur says. “I also hope the insights from this research will lay the foundation for new and smarter antibody therapies against other viruses.”
Many patients undergo medical check-ups for years, even though there is often no proof that they are truly necessary. In this project, Sanne van Munster will investigate when such check-ups can be safely reduced or stopped.
Using a national program in which endoscopic surveillance for Barrett’s esophagus patients was discontinued, she will determine how much health risk is acceptable before restarting checks. By combining medical data, costs, and the preferences of patients and doctors, Van Munster aims to provide clear guidelines for appropriate care. “I hope my research will help inspire a new way of thinking about healthcare: more care is not always better care,” Van Munster says. “We should only perform tests or provide treatment when they truly add value for the patient.”
Many new medicines fail or cause serious side effects because current laboratory models cannot fully mimic how human organs work. The liver is especially important in drug safety testing, because it processes medicines and helps remove waste products from the body. One key process is the production and transport of bile, a fluid that supports detoxification and digestion and depends on close cooperation between different liver cell types.
With BiLIVR, Paulina Núñez Bernal will develop a new way to build human liver tissue using advanced 3D bioprinting. Instead of only printing cells into a predefined shape, the project will introduce biological instructions into printed biomaterials. In the body, tissues are not formed by simply placing cells in the right position; cells are constantly guided by signals from their surroundings. BiLIVR aims to bring this layer of dynamic biological instruction into 3D bioprinted liver models, helping them better mimic human tissue function for drug safety testing.
“In this way, I hope to create more human-relevant models that help researchers better understand how medicines affect the liver, improve the prediction of drug toxicity, and reduce reliance on animal experiments,” Nuñez Bernal says.
MRI scanners are used to diagnose disease without harming the patient, but they often fail to spot disease in its early stages because of the fundamental building blocks of images: the pixel. These square building blocks are fundamentally at odds with the complex shapes of organs and tumors.
Therefore, Maarten Terpstra will establish a new technique to build MRI images using artificial intelligence (AI) to learn new image building blocks that represent the human anatomy, consisting of complex shapes that align with the underlying anatomy rather than square pixels. “With this technique, we can make MRI scans so sharp and detailed that even the smallest structures become visible,” he says. “I hope this will allow us to detect life-threatening diseases at an earlier stage and improve treatment outcomes.”
