Sander van der Laan

I am an assistant professor leading a team of enthousiastic computational scientists and (medical) biologists at the Central Diagnostics Laboratory and a member of the Circulatory Health Program at the University Medical Center Utrecht.

My team

In our team's research we focus on the genetic causes of atherosclerosis and its effects on plaque morphology that underly ischemic stroke and coronary artery disease, and subclinical atherosclerosis of the carotid and coronaries. 

With our collaborative work we aim to move from genome-wide association studies loci to novel therapeutic targets and (surrogate) biomarkers for cardiovascular diseases through extensive in silico, and in vitro modelling.

As a means to this end, my team is currently working on integrating Bayesian fine-mapping methodology, co-localization, causal inference through Mendelian Randomization, expression and methylation quantitative trait loci analyses, GWAS, single-cell RNA sequencing, and plaque characterization based on high-throughput imaging of histological slides and machine learning algorithms. This has resulted in the identification of 28 loci with a substrate in plaques that harbor genes potentially causal to atherosclerosis and amenable to therapy. 

Our vision is that this holistic approach will identify the truly viable targets to feed the drug developmental pipeline to combat the cardiovascular disease epidemic. This approach is entirely human-centered and does not involved new in vivo experiments.

My team supports and promotes principles of Open Science by letting values of quality and integrity, science for the benefit of all, fairness, equity, diversity and inclusiveness guide our work. We value transparency, reproducibility, and critique, accountability, responsibility, and collaboration. The Future of Science is Open, as is our Science.

About me

I actively contribute to the International Stroke Genetics Consortium. In addition, I made some contributions to international consortia, including GENIUS-CHD, GIANT, GLGC, GoDMC, and various other international consortia.

Together with Menno de Winther and Jeffrey Kroon, I re-activated the Dutch Atherosclerosis Society and I am one of the driving forces in the current DAS board.

I hold a degree in Biology (BSc) and Medical Biology (MSc) from the Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. I obtained my PhD in 2016 entitled "The genetics of carotid atherosclerosis - Associations with clinical outcome and histological plaque characteristics" under supervision of professor Gerard Pasterkamp, professor Paul I.W. de Bakker, and doctor Jessica van Setten. The thesis is publicly available here and it is the first thesis accompanied by a soundtrack available on Spotify.

I and my team's work is covered through various (inter)national collaborative grant programs: EU H2020 TO_AITION (grant number: 848146), EU HORIZON NextGen (grant number: 101136962), EU HORIZON MIRACLE (grant number: 101115381), NIH-NKD (), and Health~Holland PPP Allowance ‘Getting the Perfect Image’.

We are thankful for the support of the Leducq Fondation ‘PlaqOmics’ and ‘AtheroGen’, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative ‘MetaPlaq’. The research for this contribution was made possible by the AI for Health working group of the EWUU alliance (https://aiforhealth.ewuu.nl/). The collaborative project ‘Getting the Perfect Image’ was co-financed through use of PPP Allowance awarded by Health~Holland, Top Sector Life Sciences & Health, to stimulate public-private partnerships.

I have received Roche funding for unrelated work.