https://www.umcutrecht.nl/en/Research/Researchers/Sluijter-Joost-P-G-JPG

https://www.sluijterlab.com/

Prof Joost Sluijter is a Medical Biologist and got his PhD in 2004 at the University Utrecht on “Collagen turnover in arterial disease”. After being a postdoctoral research fellow at Indiana University-Purdue University (IUPUI), he returned to the University Medical Centre Utrecht (the Netherlands) in 2006.  In his research group, they focus on stimulating cardiac regeneration, thereby using approaches that can lead to improved recovery of cardiac tissue upon injury. In recent years, they identified miRNAs that can push cell lineage specifications and how they could improve progenitor cell transplantation, specifically improving local delivery and cell retention. In this work, they have started to use 3D-bioprinting and advanced technologies of cardiac tissue engineering. His group substantially improved cell delivery to the myocardium, from which they also realized that most of the injected cell action was due to the potential paracrine actions. They therefore started to study the use of secreted vesicles by these cells as a novel approach to induce cardiac repair.

Prof Joost Sluijter is heading the Experimental Cardiology Laboratory and is nucleus member of the Regenerative Medicine program of the UMCU, he is nucleus member of the ESC working groups Cellular Biology of the Heart and Cardiovascular Regenerative & Reparative Medicine, has several editorial roles for journals, published >200 papers, and is awardee of an ERC consolidator grant.

• Nucleus member working group on Cellular Biology of the Heart (European Society of Cardiology) 2010 - current

• Chair working group on Cellular Biology of the Heart (European Society of Cardiology) 2016-2018

• Immediate past-Chair working group on Cellular Biology of the Heart (European Society of Cardiology) 2018-2020

• Nucleus member working group on Cardiovascular Regenerative & Reparative Medicine (European Society of Cardiology) 2020 - current

• Board member of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science (European Society of Cardiology) 2018-2020

• Associate editor of Journal of Cardiovascular Translational Research 2016 - current

• Associate Editor Discovery Biology and Medicine 2012-2014

• Editorial Board memeber of Clinical and Translational Physiology (Frontiers in Physiology)   2020 - current                                

• Editorial Board member of Non-coding RNA Investigation 2018 - current

• Scientific reviewer for journal (selected): Arterioslerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular biology (ATVB),   American Journal of Physiology, British Journal of Pharmacology, Cardiovascular research (Card Res), Circulation (Circ), Circulation research (Circ Res), Clinical Science, Current Pharmaceutical Design, European Heart Journal (EHJ), Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (JCMM), New England Journal of Medicine (NEJoM), Physiological Genomics, Plos One, Stem Cells International, Science.

• Scientific reviewer for grant providers (selected): Dutch Heart Foundation, NWO, Foundation de Cooperation Scientifique Campus Paris Saclay (FCS, France), Health and Medical Research Fund (China), Danish Council for Independent Research, National Center of Science and Technology Evaluation (Kazachstan), Medical Research Council (UK), Sir Henry Dale Fellowship (UK), Science foundation of Ireland

• Member of the evaluation team for Ludwig Boltzman Institute for Cardiovascular Research, Vienna, September 2019.

• Lecturer teaching program of undergraduate students at the Faculty of Medicine, Utrecht University.

• University Utrecht - advisory board for ERC Starting and consolidator Grant-candidates

• Advisory Board van de Graduate School of Life Sciences University Utrecht

• 2004-2005 Interuniversity Institute of the Netherlands (ICIN)-fellowship

• 2007-2009 Novartis Foundation for Cardiovascular Excellence Grant

• 2008-2009 van Ruyvenstichting: 

• 2009-2012 UMC Utrecht focus and mass area “cardiovascular research”

• 2010-2014 BMM-YIC

• 2011-2015 Translationeel Adult Stamcelonderzoek:

• 2012-2017 HUMAN STem cells for CArdiac REpair (HUSTCARE)

• 2014-2018 LSH Impuls: MIGRATE

• 2015-2017: BMM Smartcare2 – Smart microtissues for cardiac regeneration

• 2015-2019: Horizon 2020 – TECHNOBEAT (PHC-16-2015)

• 2015-2018: CAS-NWO Program; Cardiac cell therapy in a preclinical animal model for hereditary cardiomyopathy

• 2017-2022: Horizon 2020 - ERC-2016-CoG – 725229:  EVICARE: Extracellular Vesicle-Inspired CArdiac Repair

• 2017-2019: Vrienden UMCU: “Innovatieve directe medicijnafgifte in het hart”

• 2018-2022 – Horizon 2020 Marie S. Curie, COFUND programme RESCUE: Local Training Network on REgenerative medicine and Stem Cell technology in UtrEcht 

• 2018-2021: Technology Of Protein delivery through Extracellular Vesicles to target PCSK9 (TOP-EV), Dutch Heart Foundation 

• 2019-2024: RegMed XB Cardiovascular Moonshot 

• 2019-2024: Horizon 2020 BRAV3 (SC1-BHC-07-2019)

• 2020-2021: NL-PET - Next Level genome editing - efficient and precise correction of PLN/R14del using Prime Editing Technology. PLN foundation.

• 2021-2024: NWO-OTP - HARVEY; Heart vector-mediated gene therapy: towards a clinically applicable cure for inherited cardiomyopathies.

• 2021-2024: ZonMw - PSIDER - Multi-disciplimaire Consortia: From pluripotent stem cells to prime editing gene therapy for inherited cardiomyopathies.

• 2022-2026: Horizon-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06-02; HEAL - HLA-homozygous IPSC-cardiomyocyte aggregate manufacturing technologies for allogenic cell therapy to the heart.