VIB Times
At VIB, researchers constantly make new discoveries. With our bimonthly VIBTimes e-newsletter, we provide you with a glimpse behind the scenes and introduce you to the people responsible for these groundbreaking achievements.
Read the latest editions
Meet our brand new VIB Bio-Incubator
We proudly present our new VIB Bio-Incubator located in Ghent! In this edition, we also zoom in on the potentials of a stool transplant to improve symptoms of people with Parkinson’s disease, and we reflect on a specific way gender diversity can make a societal impact.
Ever heard of the Pac-Man of our brains?
In this edition, we explore three stories about our researchers who are unraveling inflammation's role in different health conditions. In addition, we uncover pathways to create a more sustainable agriculture, while we also delve into the mysteries of sleep.
What the fucosylation?
Discover the meaning of the fascinating word 'fucosylation', how our immune response can be improved to fight tumors, today's challenges of non-alcoholic beers, and much more interesting news.
Microbes as tiny architects
Can microbes be valuable for us instead of only giving us unpleasant infections or diseases? Well, the answer is yes! Find out their advantages, the potential future treatments of Alzheimer’s disease, and how we keep our VIB family (re)connected.
Exlore how VIB works on a more sustainable future
Join us as we explore how VIB works on a more sustainable future. Uncover why some people develop breast cancer while others don't, and discover the winner of the VIB Alumni Award.
From VIB Technologies to a healthy aging brain
Want to know why VIB Technologies is more than just a toolbox? Interested in discovering the key to a healthy aging brain? Wondering what our spin-off companies have been doing lately? And curious to meet our new group leaders?
From women in science to salty surprises
Curious about how salt could affect your immune system? Interested in the secret sauce of a successful biotech startup? Wondering how VIB is paving the way for women in science? This issue of our newsletter is jam-packed with all this info and more.
Microworld
For the December edition, we zoom in on the very small: the microworld. Expect beer, microbiomes, and vaccines.
VIB's groundbreaking work in neuroscience – and the people behind it
The brain, as the saying goes, is the most complex object in the known universe. No wonder there are still many questions about how our brains work in health and disease. To help tackle these questions, neuroscience serves as a key research area for VIB.
Science for sustainable impact
Flanders is a world-class biotech hub, and this is in no small part thanks to VIB. The institute has accelerated the excellent R&D that already took place to new levels. The local universities provide a pool of talent that will be the next generation of leading scientists, and our close partnership with the government resulted in stable strategic funding.
On the origin of impact
Twenty-five years ago, VIB began with the dream of building a life sciences powerhouse. Thanks to the biotech pioneers in Flanders at that time, we had all the raw material we needed: brains, ambition and vision.
Power of plants
From as far back as I remember, I wanted to be a researcher ('inventor' as I called it at the time). I hav always been driven to explore and discover new things and I want to keep doing so, leading me to 'where no one has gone before.' So, scientific education was a natural progression for me. I developed a strong interest in the fundamental processes of plants and their applications. After finalizing my studies of bioengineering, the most obvious choice was to further specialize in investigating the potential of improving plant traints. Quite the puzzle, which, when even partially solved, can have wide-ranging beneficial effects.
Collaboration fuels progress
Scientific research is, now more than ever, a collaborative and international effort. At VIB, we pursue cooperation at many levels -convinded that this contributes to our impact and that breaking down disciplinary silos is the future of research.
Research in times of Corona
Recent breaking news at VIB was the change in the general management. Johan Cardoen stepped down from his role as managing director for health reasons. Jérôme Van Biervliet will follow in the influential footsteps of Johan, who will remain active in a consulting role. Enjoy reading the double interview with Johan and Jérôme!
VIB Science powers biotech
What is more satisfying than developing an innovative medication, all the way from your initial basic science to a medical application? Academic discoveries that are translated to the clinic improve patients’ quality of life and add value to healthcare systems around the world. For us, this is the real meaning of ‘giving back to society’.
Grand Challenges program
In the first two decades of its existence, VIB has achieved remarkable productivity in both knowledge creation and translating this knowledge into societal and economic benefits through a professional process of proactive technology transfer.
VIB Discovery Sciences
At V-Bio Ventures we are constantly looking out for young, innovative companies in the life sciences area that develop solutions for high-demand unmet needs. When we find such a company, we provide support for the further expansion of the company’s activities. As an early stage investor and company builder we also have the ambition to back talented scientists who seek to create exceptional companies.
Your research, our technology
When I first visited VIB, I was deeply impressed with the wide availability of advanced technologies. Back then, I was living in the US, where I sometimes felt my work got stuck in first gear. This was often due to the lack or bad organization of core facilities available at the institution where I was employed. As a consequence, I didn’t have easy access to novel technologies.
Talent pool for young researchers
When visiting the VIB labs, I am always struck by the energy, the enthusiasm and the passion of young and not-so-young people from all around the world pursuing their dream of helping to cure widespread and severe diseases and finding new methods of sustainable food production for the ever-growing world population.
Single cell at VIB
Novel technologies allow the genetic profiling of every single cell within a tissue sample, whole organ or even complete organism. This is quickly revolutionizing our knowledge of biological systems across distinct research fields. No wonder many VIB groups have moved to using single cell techniques which have several advantages over earlier methods.
20 Years of value creation
I think it was 2014 when VIB’s Innovation & Business Team initiated the talks with our lab and research center. Just like us, they saw the business potential in the field of plant-protecting and plant-stimulating microorganisms. Of course, that didn’t come out of nowhere: we had the expertise, biological agricultural products were becoming a hot topic, and the technology was finally ready. All the pieces of the puzzle were present to sketch out what would later become Aphea.Bio.
Microbiology
I vividly remember upsetting quite a few people a few years back at a VIB group leader retreat. Along with several other group leaders, I was asked to give a presentation in a session on future trends in science. As expected, the session turned out to be a recital of the obvious, with people predicting more genome sequencing, more big data, more CRISPR/Cas, more single-cell research. The audience was slipping into a deep, possibly irreversible, coma. That was, until I half-jokingly stated that there’s an easy answer for anyone not working in the field of microbiology: simply look at what microbiologists are doing right now to know where other fields will be headed in the coming five years. Coma transformed into fury. Someone stood up and shouted that microbes don’t even have neurons and that it is therefore rather unlikely that they would be good predictors of where the field of neurobiology would head to. Plant scientists, cancer specialists and immunologists nodded enthusiastically.
Open science
The first time I heard someone talking about open science a few years ago, I first thought naively: “What’s the matter? Important values of science have been always openness, collaboration and sharing.” When the first academic societies and journals appeared nearly 400 years ago, they aimed for the free sharing, circulation and spread of scientific knowledge. But, as Professor Brian Nosek from the Open Science Centre points out, information sharing within the scientific community has changed over the last few decades, becoming more “closed” and less accessible.
Stronger through diversity
To have world-class creative scientific minds, VIB needs to fish for colleagues from a bigger pool than the relatively small region of Flanders. International recruiting is also key to bringing new expertise to the institute. Thus, over the past 20 years, VIB has been busy attracting talent from across the globe. I am one of those international recruits, having worked in the UK and US before arriving in Leuven. I have experienced both sides of the coin, forming an opinion of VIB before I arrived, and now being part of VIB.
Big data
These days, “big data” is all over the news, and the news is not always good. We read about privacy loss as only 50-odd ‘likes’ on Facebook allow data miners to create an accurate portrait of your psychology, we experience that a website visit results in targeted advertisements everywhere we surf, and we are confronted with large-scale data collection by security services across the world. No wonder big data is sometimes treated with suspicion.
10 Years ERC
The European Research Council (ERC) is celebrating its tenth anniversary this spring. This unique EU funding mechanism was launched in 2007 under FP7, and has since funded more than 7,000 top researchers in all fields of research and at all stages of their careers. Together with the first ERC president Fotis Kafatos, VIB was one of the important architects of this brand-new type of European funding.
20 Years VIB: Science meets life
In 20 years of VIB, we have come a tremendous way. When we kicked off in 1996, nobody would have dared to suspect that our achievements would be internationally acclaimed as they are today. And although the research institutes that served as VIB’s foundations already enjoyed worldwide fame at the time, it is clear that VIB has been – and still is – a strong catalyst to ensuring that the huge potential of biotechnological research in Flanders thrives.
Model organisms at VIB
Models play a central role in the research conducted at VIB. If you take a look at our publications, the vast majority of them describe work that features one or more models. Naturally, there are a diverse range of models used in different applications. For example, the plant biology research community chose Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) several decades ago as its main model due to its small size, short generation period and limited genome size. A. thaliana has served the plant basic research community very well, and still continues to do so — but like any model, it has its limitations. This has led to the introduction of additional models: poplar for woody plants and corn for food crops, even though these plants need plenty of space in the greenhouse.
Technologies at VIB
In molecular life sciences, the incredible ingenuity of scientists and engineers such as those at VIB leads to increasingly accurate analytical methods. These are used to study the structure of the molecules that make up living matter, and to elucidate how these molecules interact in the self-propagating far-from-equilibrium steady state that essentially constitutes Life. Importantly, these methods are also those used to detect the molecular alterations that occur in diseases of plants, humans and other animals, and are the basis for the diagnostics that will progressively change medicine (and agriculture) as we know it.
Science meets science
VIB has an interesting and challenging year ahead, with many important and exciting things happening. Whereas the individual departments had their evaluations last year, VIB as a whole will be evaluated in the coming months. This evaluation – commissioned by the government of Flanders – will look into the overall results of VIB as an institute over the past five-year period. In addition, the team of consultants will also analyze the strategic plan for the coming five years. We have a lot riding on this evaluation, as the outcome will be the basis for government support for VIB in the coming period.