Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
Joost Verhaagen
The core scientific activities in the Laboratory of Neuroregeneration at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience include 1. studies on the cellular and molecular mechanism of neuroregeneration (with a focus on semaphorins, neurotrophic factors and growth-associated transcription factors), 2. the development of regeneration and plasticity promoting intervention techniques (cell and gene therapy) and 3. genomics approaches with the aim to discover new molecular targets relevant to neurorepair and plasticity. State of the art molecular biology laboratories, tissue culture, microarray and animal facilities are available. The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Neurobiological research into basic mechanisms of brain function an in neurological diseases is one of the main focus points of the Academy. The students will closely interact with and be supervised by the more senior members of the group that all do research in the fields of basic neuroregeneration and applied restorative neuroscience.
Training and transfer of knowledge environment
The project will be executed within the local infrastructure of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the Graduate School Neuroscience Amsterdam. The educational infrastructure will be provided by the graduate school Amsterdam. The laboratory infrastructure will be primarily provided by the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience where the laboratories of Partner 10 are housed. However, the graduate school is a confederation of 5 institutions in the Amsterdam area and exchange in terms of know-how and equipment is highly facilitated within this organisational framework. Thus the local infrastructure allows the execution of multidisciplinary neuroscience research from the molecular to the systems level.
Joost Verhaagen Professor, scientist Supervisor
Bas Blits Ph.D, post-doc Molecular neurobiologist
Erich Ehlert Technician Molecular neurobiologist
Selected publications
1. Tannemaat M., Boer G.J., Verhaagen, J., Malessy M. (2007). Genetic modification of human sural nerve segments with LV-NGF results in enhanced expression of nerve growth factor. Neurosurgery: in press
2. Verhaagen, J., Pasterkamp, R.J. (2007) Semaphorins. New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, in press
3. De Wit, J., Verhaagen, J. (2007) Proteoglycans and the function of axon guidance molecules. Adv. Exp. Med. Biol., 600: 73-89
4. Hendriks, W.T.J., Eggers, R., Verhaagen, J., Boer, G.J. (2007). Lenti-viral vector- mediated genetic modification of the neural scar, J. Neurosci. Res.: in press
