Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht (UMCU)
The University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU), is the academic hospital affiliated with Utrecht University. It originated in 1999 from the merger of the academic hospital Utrecht (1872), and the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital (1888). With over 1100 beds and >11000 employees, UMCU is one of the largest academic centres in the Netherlands. The UMCU organises its top-level care, research and education in six strategic programs. One of these programs is 'Infection and Immunity which focuses its efforts in the Antimicrobial Resistance research centre and the Utrecht Centre for Allergic and Inflammatory Diseases (U-CALLID). U-CALLID is dedicated to the care, research and education of allergic and inflammatory diseases. The Allergy and dermatology department is a part of U-CALLID. UMCU has excellent training facilities, offers a wide range of PhD programs and is a leader in high quality (biomedical) education and research. Every year 2-3 PhD students work in the food allergy group and > 10 internships are hosted. The food allergy group also assists in annual EAACI training schools and post graduate courses.
Learn more about the UMCU on their website, or contact Dr. Verhoeckx via e-mail.
MoSIN members uitklapper, klik om te openen
Dr. Kitty Verhoeckx, Assistant Professor Food Allergy
Assistant professor food allergy/ food allergy scientist. Expertise: analytical chemistry targeted and untargeted proteomics, protein transport, protein digestion and protein processing, immune models. Supervised 3 PhD students and 10 internships. Dr Verhoeckx is the Project Coordinator, and therefore involved in WP1 and will be involved in allergenicity assessment of novel foods. She is/was, in relation to this topic, involved in different EFSA and ILSI focus groups and chair of COST Action ImpARAS. She coordinates the Marie Curie ITN ALLPreT project. Her expertise is needed for allergy development and allergy monitoring.
Dr. Thuy-My Le, Dermatologist
Thuy-My Le is dermatologist at the department of Dermatology and Allergology of the University Medical Center of Utrecht, The Netherlands. The department is a national and international expertise center for food allergy for adults as well as children. Her focus area is optimizing diagnosis and treatment of food allergy and assessing allergenicity of novel foods. She obtained her PhD at the Utrecht University in 2013. The topic of her thesis was the epidemiology, diagnosis and management of food allergy. She participated in several European commission funded multicentre food allergy studies: the FAST study on the safety and effectiveness of subcutaneous immunotherapy for fish and the EuroPrevall study that investigated the prevalence, burden and costs of food allergy in Europe. She participates in EAACI taskforces on immunotherapy for food allergy (FIND) and on accidental food exposure risk, in the European cost-action programmes on Core outcome measures for food allergy (COMFA) and on Improved allergenicity risk assessment strategy (ImpARAS). Thuy-My Le is principal investigator in several investigator initiated food allergy studies and clinical trials. She supervises several PhD- and master students. In the MoSIN project she is leader of WP1. Her input will be related to food allergy cohort studies and clinical studies to determine sensitization and cross reactivity.
Prof. Dr. André Knulst, Professor Dermatology and Immunology
Prof. dr. André C. Knulst works at the Dept. of Dermatology/Allergology of the UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands. The Dept. of Dermatology/Allergology is national centre of expertise for eczema, food allergy and urticaria/angio-edema and also Eurpean centre of excellence for these diseases: ADCARE, UCARE, ACARE and ANACARE center.
He is a dermatologist and immunologist and heads the outpatient department of Allergology and the Allergy research. He has a longstanding experience in diagnosis and treatment of patients with allergies, with a particular interest in food allergy. Within the UMC Utrecht there is a close collaboration with the department of Children’s Pulmonology and the Center of Translational Immunology.
His research focus is on patient profiling and improvement of food allergy diagnosis a.o. using component resolved diagnostics, and novel biomarkers. He participated in many national and international multicenter studies a.o. the EU Europrevall project. Another research area of particular interest is the development of novel therapeutic options for food allergy. He is involved in epicutaneous immunotherapy in peanut allergy, subcutaneous immunotherapy using a hypoallergenic parvalbumin in fish allergy (EU-FAST), oral immunotherapy in children (ORKA-NL study). He is participating in multicenter clinical trials with novel drugs in peanut allergy. He is a member of national and international advisory boards.
Michelle Chou, MSc.
Michelle Chou is a PhD candidate studying food allergy development (WP1). She completed her master's degree in Medicine at Universiteit Leiden and has previous work experience as a junior doctor (ANIOS) in dermatology. She also has a double bachelor's degree in Medicine and Biomedical Sciences while studying at both Universiteit Leiden and Universiteit van Amsterdam. Here she gained MLII laboratory experience while working on B-cells and follicular lymphoma cells at the experimental hematology department for her thesis.