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Medical Genetics

MEDGEN is an interfaculty research group at the University of Antwerp which was recently formed after the fusion of one research team (MEDGEN) from the faculty of medicine and health sciences (FGGW) and 3 (HMG, COGNET and MGENOS) from the faculty of pharmacy, biomedical sciences and veterinary sciences (FBD). This fusion reflects a formalization of a long-time existing situation as these groups have since decades shared space, equipment and expertise. The general aim of the future research within MEDGEN is to enhance (epi)genetic research in biomedical sciences by application of state-of-the-art technologies on both constitutional and acquired genetic diseases. MEDGEN will focus on three major objectives: first, the development of technologies (e.g. third generation sequencing, epigenetics, pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), liquid biopsies and CRISPR/Cas gene editing) that allow better understanding of the biological meaning of variants in the human genome (coding and noncoding, constitutional and somatic, and genetic and epigenetic), second the use of liquid biopsies to revolutionize diagnosis and treatment follow-up in different types of cancer and finally the translation of these new genetic findings into better diagnostics, biomarkers and treatment. The study of the functional effect of variants will be key in the understanding of disease biology but also necessary for the translation into personalized medicine. It will require robust and efficient systems to explore the functional consequences of these variants by using in vitro cell cultures (especially iPSC-based) and/or animal models (mouse, zebrafish) that are representative for the human disorder of interest. For the second objective, both new biomarkers need to be developed as well as the technology to analyze these biomarkers in liquid biopsies. To address the final objective, MEDGEN will establish collaborations with clinicians and industry to translate the new genetic insights and biomarkers into innovative diagnostics and therapies. To support all this, the research team was selected by the University of Antwerp as a Center of Excellence (GENOMED) and is one of the 6 selected centers that obtained Methusalem funding. Furthermore, more recently we became part of an IOF consortium called Precision Medicine Technologies (PreMeT).

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