Prof. M.J.M. Schaaf (Marcel)

Throughout my career in research, I have dedicated my expertise to the biology of stress, with a particular focus on the role played by corticosteroid hormones. Corticosteroids hold immense importance in the medical realm. First, the primary endogenous corticosteroid in our body, cortisol, mediates many of the effects of stress, of which most are deleterious and cause serious health issues. However, they also have beneficial effects on our health, but the mechanisms underlying these positive effects are poorly understood. Second, these compounds have great therapeutic potential, since synthetic corticosteroids, such as prednisolone and dexamethasone, rank among the most prescribed medications worldwide due to their anti-inflammatory effects. Unfortunately, their clinical use is limited by the severity of their side effects. At the heart of the molecular mechanisms underlying corticosteroid signaling lies the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), a versatile protein that mediates corticosteroid effects by altering gene transcription.

I am currently running two distinct yet interconnected research lines, in
which we use the zebrafish as our main animal model. In the first line we are studying the molecular action of the corticosteroid hormone cortisol during the response to stress, and the central question that we try to answer is why chronic stress is detrimental to our health, whereas acute stress has beneficial effects. In the second line we work on the development of novel corticosteroid drugs, and we have made important steps towards the development of a new class of corticosteroids with reduced side effects.