Sleegers Lab

Big congrats to @verwilt.bsky.social‬ from the @sleegerslab.bsky.social‬ on his FWO fellowship! He’ll be mapping RNA and DNA in blood, CSF, even tear fluid, to develop non-invasive biomarkers for Alzheimer’s using long-read sequencing. https://tinyurl.com/ym6c8csr

Ciao Milano! We are happy and excited to be here for #eshg2025 @eshg.bsky.social

Come find us during the oral and poster presentations by our team members Fahri Küçükali (@maegsul.bsky.social) & Celeste Laureyssen (@celestelaureyssen.bsky.social) today and tomorrow 🧬 🧠

What a poster! Master’s student in our lab, Kato Nauwelaers, won third prize for her poster at NeuroDay 2025 @uantwerpen.be! Congrats Kato! 🎉

Look at us! 🤩 We presented the excuting research going on in our lab at the @uantwerpen.be NeuroDay 2025. So great to with fellow neuroscientist! 🧠

A new chapter in our lab has begun! Our postdoc @verwilt.bsky.social has received an FWO Junior Fellowship to look for non-invasive extracellular biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. Stay tuned for some cool research! @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social

YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME! 🥳 Extremely happy to be selected as a Junior FWO Postdoctoral fellowship! Stay tuned for novel extracellular biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease! Can’t wait to jump in these three years! 🧠🩸🧬 #fwo #RNA #cfDNA #alzheimers @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social @sleegerslab.bsky.social

The road to discovery - a collaborative effort towards new insights in blood plasma RNA profiling After more than seven years of research, our extracellular RNA quality control (exRNAQC) study has culminated in a scientific publication. This milestone is not just about sharing new findings – it re...

7 years in the making... 1.6 liters of blood and 11 billion sequencing reads to compare 456 extracellular transcriptomes.

Our best practices for blood plasma extracellular RNA profiling have been published as a peer-reviewed article.

communities.springernature.com/posts/the-ro...

Finally out! The exRNAQC Consortium is very happy to present this milestone benchmark on blood tubes and RNA extraction kits for extracellular RNA research out in @natcomms.nature.com! The associated blog post tells a story of a lengthy effort and multi-facetted collaboration🩸🧬

Our lab’s recent hackathon ☕🧠💻 was a success: three packed days, one awesome crew, endless ideas. We built fresh neurogenomics tools and leveled-up team vibes 🚀🧬

📢 More info & application details: www.uantwerpen.be/en/jobs/vaca...

#PhDPosition #MolecularBiology #CancerGenomics

🚨 PhD Position Alert! 🚨
We're excited to announce a collaborative PhD opportunity with @uantwerpen.be LEMP, investigating the role of mucin splicing in colorectal cancer. If you're passionate about RNA biology, omics, and translational research, this could be the perfect fit!

Multiomic analyses direct hypotheses for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease risk genes Küçükali & Hill et al. integrate GWAS data with transcriptome and proteome-wide association studies to better understand risk factors for sporadic Creu

Exciting news! Our paper on GWAS gene prioritization for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is now published in Brain! 🧠🧬 @brain1878.bsky.social

We leverage eQTL and pQTL catalogues to identify prioritized risk genes with potential roles in prion disease.

Check it out here: academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

Multiomic analyses direct hypotheses for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease risk genes Küçükali & Hill et al. integrate GWAS data with transcriptome and proteome-wide association studies to better understand risk factors for sporadic Creu

New paper on risk genes for sporadic CJD academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

Very happy to see our review on Alzheimer's disease rare genetic variants published in @natrevneurol.bsky.social! 🧠🧬

Huge congrats to our PhD student @laradedeyn.bsky.social 🎉👏✨

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New online! The impact of rare genetic variants on Alzheimer disease https://bit.ly/4hntQtT

From tears to AD biomarkers! @verwilt.bsky.social recently received a 10.000 euro @uantwerpen.bsky.social BOF KP grant to kickstart our research on the biomarker potential of tear fluid RNA in AD! 🥲🧬

We have an open position for a PhD student to look for new #biomarkers for #epilepsy and #alzheimersdisease in blood/serum, cerebrospinal fluid, and brain tissue samples. 📈 🩸 🧠
A joint position in the @sleegerslab.bsky.social and Weckhuysen lab.
All info 👉 cmn.sites.vib.be/en/join-us#/...

💼💥Ph.D. JOB ALERT!!! Together with the lab of Prof. Weckhuysen, we are looking for a motivated Ph.D. student 🧑‍🎓 to explore the wonders of liquid biopsies and help diagnosing Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy patients 🧠🩸

🧠 New insights into the genetic factors that drive Alzheimer’s disease
👉 Read here: vibbio.tech/4izHlYc
🔬 Study led by Prof. Kristel Sleegers of VIB-UAntwerp Center for Molecular Neurology @uantwerpen.bsky.social @alzassociation.bsky.social

X‐chromosome-wide association study for Alzheimer’s disease Molecular Psychiatry - X‐chromosome-wide association study for Alzheimer’s disease

Finally out! X‐chromosome-wide association study for Alzheimer. Our new EADB work led by Celine Bellenguez in collaboration with GR@ACE, DEGESCO, EADI, GERAD, DemGene, FinnGen, ADGC and CHARGE. We identified seven X-chromosome-wide significant loci that need further validation.
rdcu.be/d2tWv

Current Understandings and Open Hypotheses on Extracellular Circular RNAs Circular RNAs are present in the extracellular space and could function as biomarkers. However, it remains mostly unknown in which fraction(s) of them are present: in lipoprotein particles, in comple...

🤝 Marieke Vromman
⭕️🧬 Very happy to share that our review on extracellular circRNAs is now out in WIREs RNA! We summarize the little that is known, navigate their daunting literature, and dive into hypotheses on their extracellular existence! wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

For the FFBD Faculty Research day, the @UAntwerpen interviewed our Ph.D. student @CelesteLaureys1 on her work on the genetic exploration of Alzheimer’s disease hallmarks . Listen to her explain her research! 🧠🧬https://open.spotify.com/episode/0isr8pKJq9w0GqLJpgrn7n?si=-05SPAOTQHKWZ34_FTIFDQ

Many thanks and congratulations to all authors who contributed to this great collaborative paper!

Stay tuned for more exciting findings from the broader new analyses by Celeste soon! ⌛️

In this study, we reveal how Alzheimer's disease risk variants discovered in large-scale case-control genome-wide association studies (GWAS) map to the diverse underlying neuropathological features of the disease.

Hypothesis-based investigation of known AD risk variants reveals the genetic underpinnings of neuropathological lesions observed in Alzheimer’s-type dementia - Acta Neuropathologica Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia worldwide. Besides neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques, a wide range of co-morbid neuropathological features can be observed...

We are excited to share that our new paper, led by Celeste Laureyssen, is now published in Acta Neuropathologica and available online!🧠🧬

Check out our new publication here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Talking long reads in Uppsala! Find the ever-enthusiastic Tijs Watzeels at his poster where he will draw you into the world of differential isoform usage in AD! 🧠🧬 #LRUA24

The last few days, one of our Ph.D. students Celeste Laureyssen presented a poster on her research at ECDO Conference focusing on “Cell Death at the Crossroads of Neurodegeneration and Cancer". Stay tuned for the follow-up paper soon to be published! 🥳🧐#ECDO2024

Scywalker: scalable end-to-end data analysis workflow for long-read single-cell transcriptome sequencing AbstractMotivation. Existing nanopore single-cell data analysis tools showed severe limitations in handling current data sizes.Results. We introduce scywal

Very happy to see our new paper on our new tool for comprehensive analysis of single-cell RNA long-reads, 𝙨𝙘𝙮𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙚𝙧, published! 🧬

If you have any long-read single-cell datasets, give it a try!

Paper: academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

GitHub: github.com/derijkp/scyw...

Happy and excited to be in Philly for
#AAIC24!

Come find us during the oral and poster presentations by our team members Lara De Deyn, Celeste Laureyssen, and Fahri Küçükali (@maegsul.bsky.social) on our recent work! 🧠🧬

Exciting news! Yesterday, we were honored to receive a generous grant from Stichting Alzheimer Onderzoek! This grant is a crucial step forward for our Alzheimer's research as we'll be delving into the intricacies of the ABCA7 gene, a risk factor in AD 🧠🧬 Thanks to everyone involved!