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.

• 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.