Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

Endocrinology Research Laboratory and Department of Endocrinology

[Scientific staff | Publications within DiMI | References]

Group Description

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) is an academic hospital of about 4000 employees. The research of the Endocrinology Research Laboratory (ERL) is focused on 2 main topics:
1. tumor progression and metastasis of breast and prostate cancer to bone;
2. Stem cell differentiation (and fate) into bone, cartilage, fat and neuronal cells.
The group of Prof. Löwik was one of the pioneers in Europe concerning the use of non-invasive in vivo bioluminescence imaging (BLI) based on photon detection generated by luciferase activity. The group further has longstanding expertise in state-of-the-art molecular biological and cell biological techniques including gene transfer using traditional transfection, in vivo electroporation of naked DNA constructs into cells and tissues and extremely efficient lentiviral infection technology to produce transgenic cell lines. This combination of expertise in molecular cell biology and molecular BLI allows the study of gene expression in vivo non-invasively and to follow the fate of cells stably expressing luciferase.

In this field, LUMC are a leading European research group and Prof Löwik is a subcoordinator of, and his lab is a Technology and Training Platform (TTP) within, the European Network of Excellence called EMIL (European Molecular Imaging Laboratories). During the last year the group has also obtained significant experience in near infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging which offers complementary possibilities to BLI. Within the LUMC-ERL many optical imaging systems are available for BLI and FLI, including several 2D planar (i.e. Xenogen, Berthold Technologies, Hamamatsu) and one life-time (or time-domain) imaging system (GE eXplore Optix). At the moment the optical imaging technology is used to optimize new therapeutic approaches for treatment of cancer and for tissue regeneration.