Radboud University
The NWO Domain Board Science has awarded 26 applications in the Open Competition ENW-XS. Two of them are granted to researchers from the Faculty of Science at Radboud University.
Within the Open Competition ENW, researchers can individually or collaboratively submit research proposals for curiosity-driven, unrestricted fundamental research in the research domains of the NWO Domain Science (ENW).
The funded projects from Radboud University are by Dr. Joost Martens (Efficient reprogramming of human placental cells for stem cell therapies) and Dr. Wim Velema (Exploring Bacterial Dark Matter for Antibiotic Development).
Stem cell therapy offers therapeutic possibilities for conditions such as leukemia and diabetes, where dysfunctional or damaged cells are replaced with new healthy cells. A promising source of cells for stem cell therapy that is non-invasive and ethically responsible is trophoblast cells obtained from the placenta after birth. However, methods for efficiently reprogramming these cells into pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate into the required cell types and tissues, are lacking. Therefore, our goal is to identify small molecules that enable efficient reprogramming as a crucial step towards the application of placental cells in stem cell therapy.
The antibiotic crisis poses a threat to modern medicine and is a major risk to global health. The current approach to developing new antibiotics has failed, highlighting the need to explore alternative options. A significant reason for the lack of new antibiotics is the high toxicity that many candidate antibiotics exhibit towards humans. We will explore a radically different approach to developing new antibiotics. Our focus will be on a recently discovered and exclusively bacterial target, combined with an innovative sensor design to screen large quantities of potential antibiotics.