Projects

This PhD will contribute to the understanding of healthy and active aging, all the more important given the increasing number of older adults in the population. Dementia currently affects more than 47 million people worldwide, is forecasted to triple by 2050 and has been reported to be one of the most costly disorders in Belgium.

There is good scientific evidence that the cognitive impairments associated with the development of dementia ...

(Breast) tumors can behave differently in young versus old patients. More and more research points out the crucial role of the immune system in tumorigenesis and progression, but, at the same time, the immune system is one of the most affected components in the process of ageing. The purpose of this research project is to gain more insight into the intriguing relationship between ageing and breast cancer biology, more specifically ...

Some 95% of all stars in the galaxy have an initial mass lower than 8 solar masses; it is now thought that the majority has at least one planetary companion. During the post-main-sequence evolution, these stars go through giant phases characterized by significant mass loss, large stellar radii, strong pulsations, and extreme luminosities. These changes in stellar characteristics may completely transform a planetary system: the stellar wind, ...

The extent of the visual degradation in Color Field paintings, due to the ageing of (synthetic) materials has been largely overlooked. Since the relevance and meaning of Color Field paintings strongly depend on their specific visual effects, significant visual alterations often imply a loss of the original intentions of the artists. This project wants to thematise the ageing problem in art history and develop a new extensive reconstruction ...

Ageing is a major risk factor for heart failure, which is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Which factors and processes render the elderly heart more vulnerable to additional stressors, like hypertension, remains unclear. Growing evidence suggests that the hearts’ resident cells (cardiomyocytes and fibroblasts) are not the sole contributors to this increasing vulnerability. With ageing, the immune system undergoes a shift from adaptive ...

Ageing is the greatest risk factor for heart failure. Heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes, CMs) experience ageing-associated alterations leading to a lower functional output, caused by (among others) maladaptive remodelling of the myocardium, including hypertrophy of individual cardiomyocytes. CMs are long-lived (decades) and have limited proliferative capacity. Transcriptional variation (heterogeneity) between CMs increase with age, with ...