October 19-23, 2019 – Barcelona, Spain

ESR Andrew Li Yim will show his results via poster presentation entitled “Peripheral blood methylation profiles are strong predictors of response to infliximab and vedolizumab in Crohn’s disease ” on the United European Gastroenterology Week (UEGW) in Barcelona, Spain.

UEG Week combines world class scientific research, invited lectures by leading minds in gastroenterology and an excellent Postgraduate Teaching Programme. Multidisciplinary is a key focus of UEG Week, which covers topics of interest for the entire GI community. UEG Week is the perfect stage to present new research and thinking across a wide range of digestive disease areas, cutting-edge post-graduate teaching sessions.

More information about the UEGW can be found here.

October 4th, 2019 – London, United Kingdom

On the Markets&markets Epigenetic Congress in London, United Kingdom, several EpiMac-presentations were given.

ESR Ahmed Elfiky showed his results on a poster with the title “Macrophage targeted Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor modulates colon Macrophage and Dendritic cells during acute DSS colitis“.

Wouter de Jonge showed the results of ESR Mohammed Ghiboub in an oral presentation entitled “The epigenetic protein SP140 directs inflammatory activation of macrophages in crohn’s disease”.

Furthermore, supervisor at GSK Inma Rioja Pastor gave a presentation with the title “Drugging transcription: Progress and potential for treating human immune dysfunction”.

More information about this interesting congress can be found here.

September, 2019 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The first PhD defense date is known! Charo Luque Martin will defend her thesis on Friday April 24th, 2020. We’re all looking forward to this happy event.

July 10, 2019 – Stevenage, United Kingdom

On July 10th, the people involved in the EpiMac project were at the end meeting at GSK in Stevenage, UK. All the ESRs gave a presentation of their projects with the last results. The fruitfull collaboration was ended with a dinner.

June 19-20, 2019 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ESR Andrew Li Yim gave an oral presentation together with PhD students Ishtu Hageman and Vincent Joustra with the title “Personalized medicine in CD: are epigenetic markers the answer?” on the IBD Today & Tomorrow meeting in Amsterdam.

More information about the IBD Today & Tomorrow meeting can be found in this PDF.

May 26-29, 2019 – Maastricht, The Netherlands

ESR Oliver Chen gave an oral presentation entitled “Lysine Demethylase 3A (KDM3A) deficiency affects macrophage inflammatory responses and reduces atherogenesis” on the 87th congress of the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS).

EAS Congress aims to be a platform for participants from all corners of the world to connect. The personal meeting – presenting and discussing one’s work with others, and sparking ideas from others’ work – is the key to progress in science.

More information about the EAS can be found on the website.

May 18-21, 2019 – San Diego, CA, United States

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub gave an oral presentation entitled “The epigenetic protein SP140 directs inflammatory activation of macrophages in Crohn’s disease” at the Digestive Disease Week in San Diego, CA, United States.

Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) is the world’s leading educational forum for academicians, clinicians, researchers, students and trainees working in gastroenterology, hepatology, GI endoscopy, gastrointestinal surgery and related fields.

More information about the organisation can be found on the website.

March 20-21, 2019 – Veldhoven, The Netherlands

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub gave an oral presentation entitled “Mucosal macrophages express elevated levels of HDAC9 in inflamed and uninflamed mucosa of Crohn’s disease, but not ulcerative colitis” at the Dutch Digestive Disease Days of the NVGE in Veldhoven, The Netherlands.

More information about the organisation can be found on the website.

September 27-29, 2018 – Verona, Italy

ESR Oliver Chen gave an oral presentation entitled “IL10 polarization regulates TNF-signaling and mitochondrial function in human macrophages”at the 32nd Annual Conference of the European Macrophage and Dendritic Cell Society in Verona, Italy.

Each year the EMDS is holding an annual 2 day-meeting somewhere in Europe. The meetings are attended by 150-200 scientists from all over Europe and from overseas. Traditionally, there is only a single lecture room, no parallel session, and registrations fees that are also affordable for young scientists. The meetings are run by individuals that volunteer for that task. Therefore every meeting has its specific flavour and thematic emphasis that is determined by the local organizing committee in collaboration with members of the EMDS council.

More information about the organisation can be found via the link.

September 3-5, 2018 – London, United Kingdom

ESR Ahmed Elfiky joined the 4th  International Congress on Epigenetics & Chromatin in London, United Kingdom.

The principal objective of this conference is to provide an international platform for cutting edge research in chromatin and epigenetics.

The encompassing goal of this conference is to cover chromatin regulation, chromatin dynamics, signalling to chromatin, nuclear architecture and dynamics, developmental epigenetics, epigenomics, epigenetics and human diseases, genome stability, environmental epigenetics, Tran’s generational inheritance, functional genomics, system biology and super resolution microscopy.

More information about the organisation can be found via the link.

September 2-5, 2018 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub showed his results on “Mucosal macrophages express elevated levels of HDAC9 in inflamed and uninflamed mucosa of Crohn’s disease, but not ulcerative colitis in a poster presentation.

The 5^th ECI covered all fields of modern immunology, ranging from innate memory and tissue specific regulation of T and B cell differentiation to unsupervised analyses of big data for diagnostics and combinational immunomodulatory biologicals.

More information about the organisation can be found on the website.

July 10, 2018 – 3rd Annual Meeting, Stevenage, United Kingdom

The 3rd Annual EpiMac Meeting was held at GSK in Stevenage, United Kingdom. All supervisors from GSK as well as the AMC were present. The ESRs showed their results so far, with future plans. It’s great to see how much they accomplished in 3 years. It was an inspiring meeting.

May 7, 2018 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ESR Oliver Chen joined the symposium of the Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences organisation in Amsterdam.

More information about the organisation can be found via the link.

April 5-6, 2018 – PhD-retreat, Garderen, The Netherlands

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub joined the PhD-retreat of the Amsterdam Gastroenterology & Metabolism and gave an oral presentation entitled “Mucosal macrophages express elevated levels of HDAC9 in inflamed and uninflamed mucosa of Crohn’s disease”.

The AG&M PhD-students retreat is a meeting for all PhD-students from the AMC and VUmc with a research subject in the fields of Gastroenterology, Endocrinology, Nutrition and/or Metabolism. It is a meeting in which PhD-students can get to know their colleagues and discover, share and learn from each other’s research. It is also an excellent opportunity to practice presentation and chairing skills. Next to the presentations of the PhD-students, lectures of invited (international) speakers and non-scientific entertainment is part of the program.

More information about the AG&M is on the website.

February 18-22, 2018 – Vancouver, Canada

Several EpiMac ESRs joined the Keystone Symposium: Regulation and Dysregulation of Innate Immunity in Disease.

ESR Andrew Li Yim showed his research on a poster entitled “A distinct epigenetic profile distinguishes stenotic from noninflamed fibroblasts in the ileal mucosa of Crohn’s disease patients“.

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub presented the results on “Mucosal macrophages express elevated levels of HDAC9 in inflamed and uninflamed mucosa of Crohn’s disease, but not ulcerative colitis” on a poster.

ESR Oliver Chen gave an oral presentation about “Identification of common pathways affected in differently polarized human macrophage subsets and diseases by meta-analysis of transcriptomic datasets”

The innate immune system is fundamental to protect us from pathogens. Although the core components were first elucidated in model organisms such as Drosophila and mice, exactly how they are regulated in human health and contribute to disease remains to be fully defined. Over the past several years, our ability to study the innate immune response has been enabled by a number of transformative tools that can be used to assess gene expression, cellular physiology and gene function. Such technological advances have begun to reveal new components of the innate immune system and have led to a better understanding of its regulation and dysregulation. Importantly, these new insights have allowed us to better understand the pathophysiological basis of certain human diseases and to identify new therapeutic targets to alleviate them. This conference aims to gather different viewpoints in the field of innate immunity to discuss advances in signaling and regulatory networks and to understand how their dysregulation contributes to immunopathologies and auto-inflammatory conditions.

More information about the organisation can be found via the website.

November 17, 2017 – Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands

ESR Oliver Chen joined the symposium of the Rembrandt Institute for Cardiovascular Science (RICS).

More information about the organisation can be found via the link.

November 14-17, 2017 – Cambridge, United Kingdom

ESR Andrew Li Yim gave a poster presentation entitled “A distinct epigenetic profile distinguishes stenotic from noninflamed fibroblasts in the ileal mucosa of Crohn’s disease patients” on the congress of Epigenomics of Common Diseases in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

The 7th Epigenomics of Common Diseases conference will bring together leading scientists for the fields of epigenomics, genetics and bioinformatics to discuss the latest developments in this fast-moving area.

Epigenetic variation plays an important role in disease processes and provides a promising focus for disease prediction, prevention and treatment. Technological advancements in the past few years have fuelled a dramatic increase in the scale, breadth and availability of epigenomic reference data. Associations between epigenetic variation, a variety of risk factors and the development of many diseases continue to emerge but causality has, in many instances, not yet been established.

This meeting will focus on epigenomic studies across of a wide range of common and other diseases including cancer, and will include approaches from a variety of different disciplines. It will explore technological and methodological developments and provide a forum to present and discuss recent advances in epigenomics of relevance to human disease. This year’s meeting will emphasise recent studies on epigenetics of ageing, brain diseases, chromatin architecture, regulatory networks, and computational epigenomics. There will also be a special session on the approaches needed to demonstrate causality in epigenetic studies.

More information about the congress can be found here.

October 12-13, 2017 – 3rd Annual Congress, London, United Kingdom

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub visited the 3rd annual Epigenetics Congress in London, United Kingdom. He showed his results on HDAC3 activity is critical for inflammatory responses in human monocytes and macrophages in a poster presentation.

With a tremendous progress in technology to generate and analyze reference epigenomes, the epigenetics field is fetching a lot of importance and attention across all medical science’s areas. Additionally, novel epigenetic molecules across many target classes for drug discovery, have been the prime focus of the pharmaceutical industry.

More information on the Epigenetics Congress can be found here.

September 8, 2017 – Symposium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

On September 8th 2017, ~70 researchers came together at the Desmet Studio’s in Amsterdam for the “Gut inflammation and Metabolism” symposium, initiated by AG&M principal investigator Prof. dr. Wouter de Jonge.

AG&M researchers presented their work on gut inflammation and metabolism. Prof. dr. Max Nieuwdorp and PhD-students Annick Hartstra and Judith Zeevenhooven talked about their data on metabolic syndrome, Prof. dr. Geert D’Haens and researchers Pim Koelink (Post Doc) and Joep Grootjans (Post Doc) spoke about the ins and outs of inflammatory bowel disease. Mohammed Ghiboub presented his findings in IBD in the presentation “SP140 as a novel mediator of macrophage activation in inflammatory bowel disease”. Dr. Dries Budding deliberated on how to predict the course and optimal treatment of C. difficile infection.

As special guests, Prof. dr. Wayne Lencer and Dr. Ivan Zanoni from Children’s Hospital Boston, USA, joint the symposium to share their data on how endogenous ligands control innate immune cell metabolism, and Dr. James Kinross from Imperial College London, UK, enlightened the audience on novel methodologies for studying metabolic signaling in gut inflammation.

More information on the AG&M can be found on the website.

July 6, 2017 – Annual symposium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ESR Oliver Chen gave a poster presentation entitled “KDM3A knockdown in macrophages leads to a hypo-inflammatory phenotype” on the annual symposium of the Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences (ACS).

The mission of Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences is to design knowledge-based treatment strategies to prevent and cure cardiovascular diseases. For this purpose, education, research and clinical activities are concentrated in five Research Programs that not only translate experiments to clinical interventions, but also use clinical observations to develop and validate novel biological concepts.

More information on the ACS can be found via the link.

June 21, 2017 – 2nd Annual meeting, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The 2nd Annual EpiMac Meeting was held in the Silver Tower in the Center of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. During this meeting, the supervisors from GSK and the AMC listened to the ESRs who gave a presentation about their different projects, results, current and future plans. Jan Paul Medema was invited as guest speaker. It was a very interesting and pleasant meeting.

May 6-9, 2017 – Chicago, IL, United States

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub presented his poster entitled “HDAC3 controls the inflammatory response and LPS tolerance in human monocytes and macrophages” on the Digestive Disease Week in Chicago, IL.

Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) is the world’s leading educational forum for academicians, clinicians, researchers, students and trainees working in gastroenterology, hepatology, GI endoscopy, gastrointestinal surgery and related fields.

More information on the DDW can be found via the link.

April 20-21, 2017 – PhD Retreat, Garderen, The Netherlands

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub joined the annual PhD Retreat of the Amsterdam Gastroenterology and Metabolism congress in Garderen, The Netherlands. He presented his work “HDAC3 controls the inflammatory response in human monocytes and macrophages” in an oral presentation.

The AG&M PhD-students retreat is a meeting for all PhD-students from the AMC and VUmc with a research subject in the fields of Gastroenterology, Endocrinology, Nutrition and/or Metabolism. It is a meeting in which PhD-students can get to know their colleagues and discover, share and learn from each other’s research. It is also an excellent opportunity to practice presentation and chairing skills. Next to the presentations of the PhD-students, lectures of invited (international) speakers and non-scientific entertainment is part of the program.

More information is on the website of the organisation.

January 11, 2017 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

On January 11th, the EpiMac Mid-Term Review Meeting was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The supervisors from the AMC as well as from GSK watched all ESRs presenting an update on their different project lines with the results and the future plans. Also the project officer from the EU, Monica Garcia and Puerto, and the financial manager, Eugenie Quartier, joined this meeting. It was a very fruitful meeting.

December 6-9, 2016 – Annual Congress, Liverpool

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub joined the annual congress in Liverpool. It is a joint event between the British Society for Immunology and the Dutch Society for Immunology, bringing together two of Europe’s most established immunology organisations. Mohammed presented his research in a poster with the title “HDAC3 controls the inflammatory response and LPS tolerance in human monocytes and macrophages“.

More information is on the website of the organisation.

November 4, 2016 – Annual symposium, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands

ESRs Oliver Chen and Charo Luque-Martin joined the annual symposium of the Rembrandt Institute for Cardiovascular Science (RICS).

The Rembrandt Institute of Cardiovascular Science is a Dutch scientific collaboration aimed at beating cardiovascular disease. For more information, visit the website of the organisation.

November 1-4, 2016 – Conference, Hinxton, United Kingdom

ESR Andrew Li Yim joined the Conference Epigenomics in Common Diseases in Hinxton and gave a poster presentation about his research entitled “Distinctive methylation pattern associated to Crohn’s disease in mucosal-derived fibroblasts“. For the second year, Andrew won a prize for his excellent presentation.

Epigenetic variation plays an important role in disease processes and provides a promising focus for disease prediction, prevention and treatment. For more information, please check the website.

October 7, 2016 – Annual symposium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ESRs Charo Luque-Martin and Oliver Chen joined the Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences Year Symposium (ACS) in Amsterdam.

The mission of the Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences is to design knowledge-based treatment strategies to prevent and cure cardiovascular disease. For this purpose, education, research and clinical activities are concentrated in four Centers of Excellence that not only translate experiments to clinical interventions, but also use clinical observations to develop and validate novel biological concepts. For more information, check the website.

September 21-23, 2016 – Symposium, Amsterdam

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub joined the EMDS Symposium in Amsterdam. He gave an update of his research on a poster, entitled “SP140 is a Potential Mediator of Macrophage Activation in Inflammatory Bowel Disease”.

More information can be found on the website of the organisation.

September 8 & 9, 2016 – 2nd Annual Congress, London, United Kingdom

ESRs Svenja Löring and Charo Luque-Martin joined the 2nd annual Epigenetics Discovery Congress in London. Epigenetics has flourished to become one of the most revolutionary areas of science over the past decade. Also, advances in the understanding of epigenetic processes have led to a burst in interest in this area as a potential source of new targets for the discovery of medicines.

For more information, go to the website of the organisation.

June 8, 2016 – 1st annual meeting, Stevenage, United Kingdom

The 1st annual meeting was held at GSK in Stevenage, UK. All ESRs gave an update on the progress of their research project. Furthermore, Luke O’Neill was a guest speaker. It was a very interesting and constructive meeting.

April 7-8, 2016 – PhD Retreat, Garderen, The Netherlands

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub presented his research in an oral presentation entitled “SP140 is a Novel Mediator of Macrophage Activation in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)” at the Amsterdam Gastroenterology & Metabolism PhD Retreat in Garderen, The Netherlands.

The AG&M PhD-students retreat is a meeting for all PhD-students from the AMC and VUmc with a research subject in the fields of Gastroenterology, Endocrinology, Nutrition and/or Metabolism. It is a meeting in which PhD-students can get to know their colleagues and discover, share and learn from each other’s research. It is also an excellent opportunity to practice presentation and chairing skills. Next to the presentations of the PhD-students, lectures of invited (international) speakers and non-scientific entertainment is part of the program.

More information can be found on the website of the organisation.

April 3-6, 2016 – 13th Congress, Kyoto

ESR Andrew Li Yim presented his research entitled “”DNA methylation profiling of Crohn’s disease in peripheral blood and CD14+ cells in women” on the 13th Internation Congress of Human Genetics in Kyoto, Japan.

Recent spectacular advancement in the technologies of genome analyses including next generation sequencing and in the informatics of huge data including genome sequences and medical information, are bringing exceptional opportunities for better understanding our human genome and diseases, and, furthermore, for developing more efficacious treatment for diseases. More information can be found on the website of the organisation.

March 31 & April 1, 2016 – Symposium “The immune system strikes back”

ESR Mohammed Ghiboub joined the NVvI Symposium in Lunteren. This year’s Lunteren Symposium focused on novel immunological insights into host-pathogen interactions. Pathogens appear to have incorporated exquisite strategies to circumvent, counteract, and/or withstand immune barriers in order to establish infection. More knowledge on these mechanisms will not only advance our understanding of the immune system, may result in novel therapeutic strategies for a wide variety of diseases.

For more information, check the website.

November 9, 2015 – Poster prize

Andrew Li Yim and Peter Henneman joined the conference “Epigenomics of Common Diseases”, which was held in Hinxton UK from November 6^th – 9^th. Andrew became second with his poster presentation entitled “Genome-wide methylation profiling of Crohn’s disease in women”.

October 8 & 9, 2015 – Cells living on the edge

ESRs Svenja Löring and Mohammed Ghiboub joined the Mucosal Immunology Symposium “Cells living on the edge” in Rotterdam on October 8 and 9. The very interesting symposium was organised by the Erasmus Postgraduate School Molecular Medicine.

For more information, check their website.

June 8, 2015 – The Epimac kick-off meeting was held. It started on June 8th with a dinner at restaurant “In de Waag”.

It was continued the next day in the “Schreierstoren” with scientific presentations by Wouter de Jonge, Peter Henneman and Menno de Winther. Rab Prinjha and David Tough from Glaxo Smith Kline presented the latest developments and Edwin Groenewegen van Wijk showed the financial implementation. As a special guest, Matthias Zilbauer gave a master class about the conditions for good epigenetic research and a special focus on epigenetics in epithelial cells.

June 1, 2015 – Launch of the Epimac website

Here at Epimac we’re very excited to announce the launch of our newly designed website which is live today and is located at the new web address www.epimac.eu. The site’s homepage features bright colors and an uncluttered design as well as including our newly designed logo. A few of our goals with this website were to make it informative, fast, easy to navigate and user friendly.