PhD defence J.G.H.P. (Jeroen) Verhoeven

Minimally Invasive Detection of Transplant Rejection
Promotor
Prof.dr. C.C. Baan
Co-promotor
Dr. D.A. Hesselink
Co-promotor
Dr.ir. K. Boer
Date
Wednesday 30 Nov 2022, 15:30 - 17:00
Type
PhD defence
Space
Professor Andries Querido room
Building
Education Center
Location
Erasmus MC
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J.G.H.P. Verhoeven will defend his PhD dissertation on Wednesday 30 November 2022, entitled: ’Minimally Invasive Detection of Transplant Rejection‘.

Summary:

Solid organ transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage heart and kidney disease. Allograft rejection (AR) is an important complication affecting 10-20% of
kidney transplantations and around 25% of heart transplantations within the fi rst year after transplantation (1-3). AR may cause irreversible allograft injury limiting the survival of the allograft and the recipient (2). Therefore, early diagnosis and appropriate treatment is necessary. Shortcomings of the currently used diagnostic methods to diagnose AR are the following: 1) the gold standard to diagnose AR, an allograft biopsy, is an invasive and costly procedure which is subject to interpretation and sampling error (4, 5); 2) the conventional biomarkers used (e.g. serum creatinine concentrations and urinary protein concentrations) are insensitive and non-specifi c for AR as these biomarkers only increase (indicating allograft injury) when a substantial amount of allograft tissue has been damaged (6). For these reasons, novel and minimally-invasive biomarkers are needed which are ideally sensitive and specifi c for AR and may ultimately reduce the number of allograft biopsies (7, 8). The overall aim of the studies performed in this thesis was to examine the diagnostic performance of three minimally-invasive biomarkers for AR: donor-derived cell-free DNA (ddcfDNA), circulating cell-free nucleosomes (CCFN), and circulating endothelial cells (cECs).

More information

The public defence will begin exactly at 15.30 hrs. The doors will be closed once the public defence starts, latecomers can access the hall via the fourth floor. Due to the solemn nature of the ceremony, we recommend that you do not take children under the age of 6 to the first part of the ceremony.

A live stream link has been provided to the candidate.

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