For the 2021 call of the Albert Geerts Fellowship we have the pleasure to announce Dr. Floris Roos, who will be joining Prof. Ludovic Vallier´s Lab in Cambridge, followed by a short stay at Prof. Frederic Lemaigre´s Lab in Brussels. On his own words:
“I am very pleased to be one of the selected recipients of the Albert Geerts fellowship of 2021. This fellowship will allow me to expand my professional network, it gives me the opportunity to work under the supervision of multiple experts in the field of liver biology, and is a crucial step for my personal development.
The formation of the human liver bud is an important stage during embryogenic liver development, eventually giving rise to both the parenchymal and biliary lineage. In the last decade several 3D-cell culture systems (organoids) were created to establish long-term cultures of complex cellular liver structures during different stages of development in vitro. Unfortunately, current protocols do not support the outgrowth of human primary tissue-derived liver buds. Under the guidance of two members of the EASL consortium for regenerative hepatology (prof. Ludovic Vallier -Cambridge Stem Cell Institute- and prof. Frédéric Lemaigre – de Duve Institute), I aim to establish a culture system for generating human liver buds in vitro. By doing so, we hope to obtain novel insights in developmental mechanisms of the liver and to identify growth factors required for the outgrowth of differentiated cell types (hepatocytes). This knowledge will be useful not only to generate such cells in vitro but also to understand the mechanisms driving liver regeneration in health and in diseases.”