Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) is an Urban Engaged University in Brussels, the heart of Europe. 20,000 students, nearly a quarter of them from abroad, are engaged in building their future and that of the world. With top-quality scientific research and customized education, VUB makes an active and engaged contribution to a better and more sustainable society.

The university hospital of the VUB, UZ Brussel, aims to offer a full range of accredited health services and optimum quality at regional, national and international level. The services provided include both basic medical care and innovative, cutting-edge technologies. UZ Brussel is a university hospital, which employs a solid, specialized nursing and (para-)medical team and uses high-tech equipment, and patients come here to benefit from highly specialized treatments or sophisticated equipment. It provides these treatments in cooperation with the referring doctors, cooperating hospitals and other care providers. UZ Brussel is a university hospital and therefore has a teaching and training vocation, as well as a research vocation. It subscribes to the fundamental values of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel of which it is part and which are based on the principle of “independent research”. The hospital works closely with the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy and also with other faculties of the VUB.

Patient care and clinical research for neurodegenerative brain diseases that cause dementia, is headed and managed by Prof. Dr. Sebastiaan Engelborghs, across three entities contribute to research for neurodegenerative brain diseases:

The VUB research group Neuroprotection & Neuromodulation (NEUR), that unites all clinical research at the UZ Brussel departments of neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry. NEUR belongs to the interfaculty VUB Center for Neurosciences (C4N). Neurodegenerative brain disorders that lead to dementia is a research spearhead of NEUR and C4N.
The UZ Brussel department of neurology. Neurodegenerative brain disorders is one of the three focus areas of the UZ Brussel neurology department.
The UZ Brussel Center for Brain and Memory, Bru-BRAIN. Bru-BRAIN is a transdisciplinary memory clinic that implements a multidisciplinary approach using experts from neurology, geriatrics and psychiatry. The clinic aims to give people advice at short notice from different experts, and those experts will discuss cases during a weekly team meeting. Bru-BRAIN has become a full member of the European Alzheimer Disease Consortium (EADC), meeting international standards in terms of patient care and scientific research.

Website: https://www.vub.be

Prof. Dr. Sebastiaan Engelborghs, MD, PhD

Date of birth: 21 September 1970

URL: https://researchportal.vub.be/en/persons/sebastiaan-engelborghs

URL: https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/staff/sebastiaan-engelborghs/

Sebastiaan Engelborghs is full professor of neurology and neurosciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), co-director of the VUB Center for Neurosciences (C4N) and chairman of the neurology department of the VUB university hospital (UZ Brussel). He is co-founder and co-director of the transdisciplinary memory clinic in UZ Brussel, Brussels Integrated Center for Brain and Memory (Bru-BRAIN). He as well is full professor of neurosciences and neurochemistry at University of Antwerp.

Sebastiaan Engelborghs is board certified in clinical neurology (2001) and neurological revalidation medicine (2009). He achieved a PhD in medical sciences in 2004 and has interdisciplinary expertise in clinical neurology and neurosciences, including electrophysiology, neuroimaging, biochemistry, neurogenetics and neuropathology. Both clinically and with regard to research, he is specialized in neurodegenerative brain disorders that cause dementia. He has built up expertise in clinical trials for AD and related disorders for more than 20 years and was PI as well as national or global coordinating physician for several clinical trials, as well as being involved in the design of some of these clinical trials. He serves as executive board member of the European Alzheimer Disease Consortium and is vice-president of the Belgian Dementia Council (BeDeCo).

Sebastiaan Engelborghs is (co-)author on 398 PubMed-cited papers in international peer-reviewed journals and 18 book chapters which results in 25.455 citations without self-citations, and a WoS h-index of 73 (4 FEB 2023).

Full bibliography:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=engelborghs+s%5Bauthor%5D&sort=date

Joke Temmerman

Joke Temmerman is a junior biomedical researcher with a passion for clinical research. She graduated with a Master’s degree after following an internship at the Brain and Cognition research lab from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) and defending her thesis “Learning prior expectations in autism: molecular correlated of sensory and prior precision”. Now she is a PhD student for a joint-PhD project between the Universiteit Antwerpen (UAntwerpen) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). In her thesis, she studies the relationship between inflammation and neurodegeneration and in disease progression of Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, by the use of imaging and fluid biomarkers.

Publications:

Temmerman J, Van Der Veken F, et al. Brain Volume Loss Can Occur at the Rate of Normal Aging in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis Who Are Free from Disease Activity. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 2022; 11(3):523. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm11030523

Sapey-Triomphe LA, Temmerman J, et al. Prediction learning in adults with autism and its molecular correlates. Molecular Autism 12, 64(2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-021-00470-6