prof. dr. G.H. (Gerard) Koppelman

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

1. How genetics of the IL33/IL1RL1 locus can assist personalized treatment in asthma. For which patients are novel asthma treatments, targeted at the IL33/IL1RL1 pathway, best prescribed? This is an investigator-initiated project, drawn up together with Prof. Ian Sayers, University of Nottingham, and sponsored by GSK.
2. Genomics guided diagnosis and treatment of asthma inception” (09150182110046). Zon MW VICI grant 2022-2027
3. Center for Translational Pediatric Pulmonology, Teva Pharmaceuticals, the Netherlands. Here we aim to generate cell models of pediatric respiratory disease in our laboratory, using the recently optimized organoids cell culture model in our lab.
4. Prevention of epigenetic programming of asthma. Sponsored by the Lung Foundation of the Netherlands. I lead this national consortium to understand asthma development and lung growth in childhood, collaborating with Utrecht University and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). Our project shows that air pollution impedes lung growth in children. We also characterized epigenetic signatures of allergic asthma in the nasal epithelium.
5. Asthma prediction. Sponsored by the Ubbo Emmius Fund, Amsterdam chapter. The goal of this project is to improve early diagnosis of asthma in childhood. We show that genetic testing is currently not applicable to asthma in childhood.
6. Asthma phenotypes. Special grant from the Lung Foundation of the Netherlands. A grant for translational research in pediatric pulmonology. Here we describe specific patterns of wheezing in childhood, and showed that children carrying risk variants in the genes of IL1RL1/IL33 to be at risk of early asthma development.
7. Collaboration Mi-Company – non for profit collaboration to apply AI techniques in Medicine (https://micompany.nl) (/https://micompany.nl/inspiration/umcg-and-micompany-start-cross-border-collaboration-news/)
8. PIAMA birth cohort (website PIAMA). Ongoing national collaboration with RIVM, and IRAS, University of Utrecht, to investigate a national birth cohort on asthma and allergies.
9. Genomics guided drug discovery in asthma. European Union Funded project ‘PROMINENT” on personalized medicine.
10. LifeLines NEXT. Co-PI on the lung disease and allergy.