The VUB Francqui-Collen Chair 2024 “Plasticity in the brain – toward lifelong recovery from injury and disease” has been appointed to Professor Lutgarde Arckens from KU Leuven.

We are happy to invite you to the inaugural lecture and lessons by Prof. Arckens @ VUB campus Jette.

Lutgarde Arckens was appointed Associate Professor in 2003 and is head of the Neuroplasticity and Neuroproteomics Lab at KU Leuven. She received her PhD in Biology in 1995 and since then held positions as coordinator of her research group, of the Division of Animal Physiology and Neurobiology, and of the Biology Department. She became Full Professor in 2006. In 2010 she was elected as member, and in 2014 as Chair of the Advisory Board for selection of Senior Academic Staff for the Faculty of Sciences, KU Leuven. She has trained more than 10 junior laboratory technicians, 85 MSc students, 30 Belgian/foreign PhD students, and more than 15 post-doc fellows. Currently she supervises 5 PhD students and 5 postdocs. Over the past years, she obtained many projects & grants, including EU grants (COST, CELSA, Eranet), (inter)national grants (KU Leuven, FWO, IWT grants & fellowships, HERCULES, Canadian & Polish funding), as (co)-promoter and scientific advisor. Her research focuses on studying the mechanisms of brain plasticity in health, disease and aging. She makes use of sensory deprivation models (vision loss) and injury models (TBI). She develops and applies state-of-the-art technologies, including drug/toxin administration, opto- and pharmacogenetics, functional proteomics, single cell transcriptomics and cell sorting strategies to disentangle cell type-specific and cell circuit contributions to functional brain recovery from injury. Efforts are maximized by comparing species with different capacities for neuroplasticity including killifish, mouse and cat.
She co-founded the Vision Core Leuven and played an important role in the launch of the Leuven Brain Institute where she currently is board member. She also founded the KU Leuven killifish consortium in 2016, and recently initiated the preclinical KillAge platform for the identification of novel targets and drug testing to combat age-related brain disease development and progression. Although she has only been working on killifish for the past five years, she is already a renowned name in the community, which led her to host the 2023 European Nothobranchius conference. She teaches several courses at Bachelor level (Medical Biology, Basic biology) and Master level (Neurobiology, Biology and Society, Interactive Seminars, Modern methods in Biology, Coaching of external internships in industry).

https://bio.kuleuven.be/df/la
ORCID 0000-0002-2909-8449

 

The Francqui-Collen Chair is hosted by Prof Ann Massie.. After obtaining a PhD in Biology (2003) at KU Leuven (promotors Prof. F. Vandesande and Prof. L. Arckens), Ann Massie did a postdoc at VUB. At the same university, she was appointed as Assistant Professor (2011), Associate Professor (2017) and Professor (2022). Since 2014, she is head of the research group Neuro-Aging & Viro-Immunotherapy (NAVI). She has trained more than 50 MSc students, 10 Belgian/foreign PhD students, and 2 postdoc fellows. Currently she supervises 7 PhD students and 1 postdoc.
Her research focusses on the cystine/glutamate antiporter system x c - in health and disease. After having identified system x c - as regulator of age-related cognitive decline and neurodegeneration, her team now investigates the function of system x c - in modulating neurotransmission, (brain) metabolism, (neuro)inflammation and proteostasis in physiological as well as pathological conditions. She teaches several courses at Bachelor level (Immunology and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology) and Master level (Neurovirology) and is responsible for the professional internship of the master students drug development.

https://navi.research.vub.be
ORCID 0000-0002-8418-5879

 

Professor Arckens will give five lectures as VUB Francqui-Collen Chair Holder. The venue is Brussels Health Campus, Laarbeeklaan 103, Brussels.

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During these lectures, Professor Arckens will show the audience how creating detailed knowledge about common and specific principles and mechanisms that guide brain plasticity during development and adulthood - and across modalities, such as vision and touch - might lead to repair strategies that are effective under a wide range of circumstances, injuries and diseases.

Following aspects will be addressed:

  • The impact of brain damage and disease on health care
  • The complexity of brain recovery and the impact of age
  • The tools that can be used to control and modulate brain function
  • How modern technologies and more knowledge from new animal models will revolutionize brain repair

  • 22/2/2024 - 16h30, Inaugural lecture followed by a reception, Auditorium Piet Brouwer: How the brain copes with permanent damage in different phases of life
  • 14/3/2024 – 16h30: Lecture 1, Aud 4: Retinal damage and vision loss
  • 18/4/2024 – 16h30: Lecture 2, Aud 4: Cross-modal brain plasticity: when visual cortex becomes sensitive to touch
  • 02/5/2024 – 16h30: Lecture 3, Aud 4: Cellular and Molecular mechanisms of brain plasticity
  • 21/5/2024 – 16h30: Lecture 4, Aud Piet Brouwer: The factor age in brain recovery – what a small fish can tell