Monique van der Wijst, PhD

BSc in Biomedical Sciences from the Radboud University Nijmegen, 2010
MSc in Oncology from the VU University Amsterdam, 2012
PhD thesis: Reactive oxygen species in health and disease: Finding the right balance
University of Groningen, 2016 (cum laude)

Email

See my publications in Google Scholar or at Pubmed

Keywords: Single cell omics, Genetics, Epigenetics, Mitochondria, Within-donor cell-to-cell variation

Research interests

Monique van der Wijst is a molecular biologist who applies novel single-cell technologies to study the interplay between genetic and environmental factors in immune-mediated diseases. In addition, in 2019 and 2023 she received NWO Veni and Vidi grants, respectively, to pursue how (non-genetic) cell-to-cell variability impacts gene expression, its regulation, and the immune response. Moreover, in 2018, she set up the sc-eQTLGen consortium (https://eqtlgen.org/sc), in which, together with a network of 28 participating groups, pipelines have been set up to conduct large-scale single-cell analyses in population genetic datasets. With all these efforts combined, she aims to gain a personalized understanding of gene regulation that can improve precision medicine in the future.

Research grants/prizes

• 2023 Aspasia grant (€40,000), Netherlands Organization for Scientific Reserach, NWO
• 2023 VIDI Award (€800,000), Netherlands Organization for Scientific Reserach, NWO

• 2020–2022 VENI Fellowship (€250,000), Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, NWO
• 2019 Simonsfonds travel grant (€1,200), to visit the lab of Dr. Jimmie Ye at the UCSF in San Francisco, USA
• 2018 Medium investment grant (€115,712), Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, NWO
• 2015 Jan Kornelis de Cock Stichting research grant (€4,500 )
• 2011 KWF internship grant (€1,200 )
• 2011 Dutch Stomach, Liver, Intestine Society internship grant (€1,800) to visit the lab of Prof. Joan Heath at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Melbourne, Australia.
• 2011 VU Fondsendesk grant (€300), VU University Amsterdam.
• 2011 VUMC Faculty grant (€380), VU Medical Center, Amsterdam.

Invited/oral presentations (last five years)

• Gene Forum, Tartu, Estonia 2023 (invited speaker)
• ARVO Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA 2023 (invited speaker)
• Translational Immunology Groningen – TRIGR, Groningen, the Netherlands 2022 (keynote speaker)
• Single cell Network Leiden symposium, Rotterdam, Leiden, the Netherlands 2019, 2021 (invited speaker)
• Oncode Postdoc retreat, Lunteren, the Netherlands 2021 (oral presentation)
• 13^th Annual international conference on systems biology of human disease – SBHD, Berlin, Germany, 2021 (invited speaker)

Publications (last five years)

• van Blokland IV*, Oelen R*, Groot HE*, Benjamins JW, Pekayvaz KA, Losert C, Knottenberg V, Heinig M, Nicolai L, van der Harst P, Franke L, van der Wijst MG. Single-cell dissection of the immune response after acute myocardial infarction. Circulation Research: Genomics and Precision Medicine 2024.
• Pekayvaz KA*, Losert C*, Knottenberg V*, van Blokland IV, Oelen R, Groot HE, Benjamins JW, Brambs S, Kaiser R, Eivers L, Polewka V, Escaig R, Joppich M, Janjic A, Popp O, Petzold T, Zimmer R, Enard W, Saar K, Mertins P, Huebner N, van der Harst P, Franke L, van der Wijst MG, Massberg S, Heinig M**, Nicolai L**, Stark K**. Multi-Omic Factor Analysis uncovers immunological signatures with pathophysiologic and clinical implications in coronary syndromes. Nature Medicine 2024.
• Hackney JA, Shivram H, Vander Heiden J, Overall C, Orozco L, Gao X, West N, Qamra A, Chang D, Chakrabarti A, Choy DF, Combes AJ, Courau T, Fragiadakis GK, Rao AA, Ray A, Tsui J, Hu K, Kuhn NF, Krummel MF, Erle DJ, Kangelaris K, Sarma A, Lyon Z, Calfee CS, Woodruff PG, Ghale R, Mick E, Byrne A, Zha BS, Langelier C, Hendrickson CM, van der Wijst MG, Hartoularos GC, Grant T, Bueno R, Lee DS, Greenland JR, Sun Y, Perez R, Ogorodnikov A, Ward A, Ye CJ, UCSF COMET Consortium, Ramalingam T, McBride JM, Cai F, Teterina A, Bao M, Tsai L, Rosas IO, Regev A, Kapadia SB, Bauer RN, Rosenberger CM. A myeloid program associated with COVID-19 severity is decreased by therapeutic blockade of IL-6 signaling . iScience 2023: 107813.
• Boahen CK, Oelen R, Le KT, Netea MG, Franke L, van der Wijst MG, Kumar V. Integration of Candida albicans-induced single-cell gene expression data and secretory protein concentrations reveal genetic regulators of inflammation. Frontiers in Immunology 2023 February; 14: 1069379. DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1069379.
• Li S*, Schmid KT*, de Vries DH*, Korshevniuk M, Losert C, Oelen R, van Blokland IV, BIOS Consortium, sc-eQTLgen Consortium, Groot HE, Swertz MA, van der Harst P, Westra HJ, van der Wijst MG, Heinig M**, Franke L**. Identification of genetic variants that impact gene co-expression relationships using large-scale single-cell data. Genome Biology 2023 January; 24: 1-37. DOI: 10.1186/s13059-023-02897-x.
• Oelen R*, de Vries DH*, Brugge H*, Gordon G, Vochteloo M, Ye CJ, Westra HJ, Franke L**, van der Wijst MG**. Single-cell RNA-sequencing reveals widespread personalized, context-specific gene expression regulation in immune cells. Nature Communications 2022 June; 13:3267. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30893-5.
• Uniken Venema WT*, Ramirez Sanchez AD*, Bigaeva EV, Withoff S, Jonkers I, McIntyre RE, Ghouraba M, Raine T, Weersma RK, Franke L, Festen EA**, van der Wijst MG**. Gut mucosa dissociation protocols influence cell type proportions and single-cell gene expression levels. Scientific Reports 2022 June; 12:9897. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-13812-y.
• Andreu-Sánchez S*, Aubert G*, Ripoll-Cladellas A*, Henkelman S*, Zhernakova DV, Sinha T, Kurilshikov A, Cenit MC, Bonder MJ, Franke L, Wijmenga C, Fu J, van der Wijst MG, Melé M, Lansdorp P**, Zhernakova A**. Genetic, parental and lifestyle factors influence telomere length. Communications Biology 2022 June; 5:565. DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03521-7.
• Huisman C, Norgard MA, Levasseur PR, Krasnow SM, van der Wijst MG, Olson B, Marks DL. Critical changes in hypothalamic gene networks in response to pancreatic cancer as found by single-cell RNA sequencing. Molecular Metabolism 2022 April; 58: 101441. DOI: 10.1016/j.molmet.2022.101441.
• Võsa U*, Claringbould A*, Westra HJ**, Bonder MJ**, Deelen P**, Zeng B, Kirsten H, Saha A, Kreuzhuber R, Yazar S, Brugge H, Oelen R, de Vries DH, van der Wijst MG, Kasela S, Pervjakova N, Alves I, Favé MJ, Agbessi M, Christiansen MW, Jansen R, Seppälä I, Tong L, Teumer A, Schramm K, Hemani G, Verlouw J, Yaghootkar H, Sönmez R, Brown A, Kukushkina V, Kalnapenkis A, Rüeger S, Porcu E, Kronberg J, Kettunen J, Lee B, Zhang F, Qi T, Hernandez JA, Arindrarto W, Beutner F, BIOS Consortium, i2QTL Consortium, Dmitrieva J, Elansary M, Fairfax BP, Georges M, Heijmans BT, Hewitt AW, Kähönen M, Kim Y, Knight JC, Kovacs P, Krohn K, Li S, Loeffler M, Marigorta UM, Mei H, Momozawa Y, Müller-Nurasyid M, Nauck M, Nivard MG, Penninx B, Pritchard J, Raitakari OT, Rotzschke O, Slagboom EP, Stehouwer CD, Stumvoll M, Sullivan P, ‘t Hoen PA, Thiery J, Tönjes A, van Dongen J, van Iterson M, Veldink JH, Völker U, Warmerdam R, Wijmenga C, Swertz MA, Andiappan AK , Montgomery GW, Ripatti S, Perola M, Kutalik Z, Dermitzakis E, Bergmann S, Frayling T, van Meurs J, Prokisch H, Ahsan H, Pierce BL, Lehtimäki T, Boomsma DI, Psaty BM, Gharib SA, Awadalla P, Milani L, Ouwehand W, Downes K, Stegle O, Battle A , Visscher PM, Yang J, Scholz M, Powell J***, Gibson G***, Esko T***, Franke L***. Large-scale cis- and trans-eQTL analyses identify thousands of genetic loci and polygenic scores that regulate blood gene expression. Nature Genetics 2021 Sep;53(9):1300-1310.
• Van der Wijst MG*, Vazquez SE*, Hartoularos G*, Bastard* P, Grant T, Bueno R, Lee D, Greenland J, Sun Y, Perez R, Ogorodnikov A, Ward A, Mann S, Lynch KL, Yun C, Havlir D, Chamie G, Marquez C, Greenhouse B, Lionakis M, Norris P, Dumont L, Kelly K, Zhang P, Zhang Q, Gervais A, Le Voyer T, Whatley A, Byrne A, Combes AJ, Rao AA, Song YS, Fragiadakis G, Kangelaris K, Calfee C, Erle D, Hendrickson C, Krummel M, Woodruff P, Langelier C, Casanova JL**, Derisi J**, Anderson MS**, Ye CJ**, UCSF COMET Consortium. Longitudinal single-cell epitope and RNA-sequencing reveals the immunological impact of type 1 interferon autoantibodies in critical COVID-19. Science Translational Medicine 2021 Sep;13(612):eabh2624.
• Van Blokland IV, Groot HE, Franke LH, van der Wijst MG*, van der Harst P*. Translational insights from single-cell RNA sequencing across the cardiovascular disease continuum. Trends Cardiovasc Med. 2021 Mar;S1050-1738(21)00030-X.
• Aguirre-Gamboa R*, de Klein N*, di Tommaso J*, Claringbould A, van der Wijst MG, de Vries DH, Brugge H, Oelen R, Võsa U, Zorro MM, Chu X, Bakker OB, Borek Z, Ricaño-Ponce I, Deelen P, Xu C, Swertz MA, Jonkers I, Withoff S, Joosten I, Sanna S, Kumar V, Koenen HJ, Joosten LA, Netea MG, Wijmenga C, BIOS Consortium, Franke L, Li Y. Deconvolution of bulk blood eQTL effects into immune cell subpopulations. BMC Bioinformatics. 2020 June;21(243).
• de Vries DH, Matzaraki V, Bakker OB, Brugge H, Westra HJ, Netea MG, Franke L*, Kumar V*, van der Wijst MG*. Integrating GWAS with bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing reveals a role for LY86 in the anti- Candida host response. PLoS Pathog. 2020. Apr;16(4):e1008408.
• van der Wijst MG*, de Vries DH*, Groot HE, Trynka G, Hon CC, Bonder MJ, Stegle O, Nawijn MC, Idaghdour Y, van der Harst P, Ye CJ, Powell J, Theis F, Mahfouz A, Heinig M, Franke L. The single-cell eQTLGen Consortium. eLIFE 2020. Mar;9:e52155. 

*, **, *** Equal contributions