Researchers to showcase research into neonatal brain repair at the PREMSTEM Conference
The brain injury in the premature born infant: stem cell regeneration research network (PREMSTEM) is holding its final conference from 13 to 15 May 2025. The meeting will take place in Hotel SB Diagonal Zero in the Poblenou area of Barcelona, Spain. Since 2020, PREMSTEM has been focused on investigating human mesenchymal stem cells from donated umbilical cord tissue as a potential therapy to treat brain injury related to preterm birth. Now in the final year of the project, the consortium invites medical professionals, members of the scientific community, policy makers, professionals working in regulatory bodies, and parent and patient associations to hear the latest research related to improving outcomes for children and families affected by brain injury. Keynote speaker Associate Professor Atul Malhotra, a senior neonatologist at Monash Children’s Hospital, and a research academic in the Department of Paediatrics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia will talk about his…
End of year message from the PREMSTEM coordinator
Once again, a busy year for PREMSTEM with progress made across all scientific work packages as well as an acceleration in the dissemination of our results through new publications and conference talks. Furthermore, planning is underway for our own conference in May 2025. This year, the European Commission approved an extension of PREMSTEM until the end of 2025, mainly due to delays we experienced in our scientific work during the Covid pandemic. We also received positive feedback in the recent review meeting with external reviewers. Scientific progress Our labs continue to investigate the potential of human mesenchymal stem cells (H-MSCs) originating from umbilical cord tissue as a potential treatment option for brain injury related to preterm birth. The following is a summary of the work that has taken place this year. The teams at the University of Maastricht and RMIT University have completed the short-term investigations in the large…
PhD candidates and postdoc researchers present at the 2024 PREMSTEM annual meeting
On 11 June 2024 in Gothenburg, PREMSTEM’s young investigators presented their latest research to other members of the consortium. This session has become a tradition at the project’s annual in person meeting following similar session in 2022 and 2023. This year’s presenters were: Lotte Smeets, PhD candidate at Maastricht University: Biodistribution of MSCs after intravenous and intranasal administration. Lotte has been studying the biodistribution of stem cells in a preclinical large animal model of preterm birth after intravenous administration, and the biodistribution of stem cells after intranasal administration in a preclinical small animal model of preterm birth. Both studies use gold nanoparticles as a trace source. Ezgi Şengün, PhD candidate at Radboudumc: Human mesenchymal stem cells induce immune memory response through down regulation of key molecular pathways. Ezgi presented her research into the downstream effect of human mesenchymal stem cells on T cells to find out about the different pathways…
2024 Annual meeting
The PREMSTEM team met in Gothenburg on 10 and 11 June 2024 for the annual in person meeting and Young Investigator Session. Thank you to Henrik Hagberg from the University of Gothenburg for his hard work to host the PREMSTEM consortium in Sweden while also organising the biannual Hershey Conference on Developmental Brain Injury that started the day after. Besides hearing comprehensive updates from each work package leader, we also listened to a presentation from the Chiesi team about the road to clinical trials and got an update from RMIT Europe about the PREMSTEM final conference which is currently in the planning. Some key points from the discussions at the annual meeting: Our next meeting will be held in 2025 before the final conference in Barcelona.
Our co-creation journey comes to an end
In our final workshop, we co-designed solutions to two more issues which came up in interviews with parents
Introducing Lotte Smeets
Lotte is a PhD student at the MERLN Institute and the Department of Paediatrics at Maastricht University
Co-creating the final steps of the roadmap
The roadmap prototype aims to improve the clinical trials experience for families
End of year message
It’s been another busy year for the PREMSTEM team in which we also had our first project review meeting with European Commission representatives and external reviewers. We received positive feedback and comments related to how the project is progressing. To wrap things up for 2023, I’m happy to provide a short summary of some of our key activities. Scientific progress In the fourth year of the project we’ve made great strides in our scientific work and continue to see interesting results as we continue to investigate the potential of using stem cells from umbilical cord tissue to treat brain injury related to preterm birth. The Maastricht University team is tracking where stem cells end up in the small animal model by labelling them with gold nanoparticles. They are also tracking mitochondria to see how long stem cells survive. Analysis of the effectiveness of the stem cell treatment will be…
Final co-creation workshop of 2023
In this workshop we popped on our magical hats and continued to co-design a parent journey roadmap to aid communications and improve the experience of a clinical trial.
Introducing Valéry van Bruggen
Valéry is a PhD student at the University of Maastricht working with Professor Tim Wolfs and Assistant Professor Daan Ophelders