Videos

Do you have a lot of fast or rather slow muscle fibers? No worries if you don't know the answer. But for athletes, this is crucial info as it determines how best to train. Only there is one big problem, about 15 centimeters big to be precise .... That's how long the needle, used to remove a piece of muscle to find out someone's muscle fiber type, is. Sounds painful and it is. That's why Freek Van de Casteele is looking for new, reliable, and painless methods.

Do you often eat fish? 🐟 Through fish, you get a lot of healthy #omega3 fatty acids. Yet we don't owe those omega-3 to the fish themselves. Marine biologist Jens Boyen tells you about the little heroes who provide the healthy omega-3.

Did you know that 20% of all healthcare expenses are 'waste'? "We are spending large sums of money on things that don't really improve patients' health, such as overtreatment, administrative efficiencies, and so on", says Joke Borzee. To treat our financially ill healthcare sector, she is working on a scoring model to assess the overall value of treatments. Watch her explain how this would work.

Thanks to advanced proton therapy, doctors can precisely start irradiating brain tumours. Unfortunately, they do not yet dare to use this technique on tumours in the belly. Why? Because it's a bit like playing darts with a blindfold, while you have to hit a moving target, as Sophie Heymans explains in this video. She tells you about the technique she is working on to help doctors face this challenge.

Do you ever wake up feeling like you have been run over by a truck? You are not alone. As many as 1 in 5 adults suffer from a sleep disorder, ranging from sleep apnoea to insomnia. With a compact, wearable device and AI, Elisabeth Heremans wants to analyse sleep problems in patients from the comfort of their own bed, instead of having them spend the night in a sleep clinic attached to a bunch of wires.

Up to 25% of the cells present in lung cancer tumours are currently ignored. As such, we don't know what the role of these so-called B cells is. "It is crucial to figure that out because we cannot efficiently fight something we do not fully understand," says Pauline Bardet (VUB - VIB - FWO).

In her PhD, she wants to get to the bottom of those B cells and thus find out whether those cells are "good guys" or "bad guys".

When removing a kidney tumor, a surgeon has just 20 minutes to do the job. During the operation, the surgeon has to cut off the blood supply to the kidney to avoid a true blood bath. But if the kidney is without blood for too long, too much of it will die off, causing the kidney to malfunction. Using mathematical models, Saar Vermijs aims to help surgeons in their race against the clock...

Today, we can treat cancer better than ever. Yet some cancer types remain very difficult to fight. Such is the case of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive brain cancer in which only 7 in 100 patients are still alive five years after diagnosis. Hoping to help glioblastoma get small, Joke Deschildre doctored a sophisticated strategy to attack cancer cells.

As an occupational therapist, how do you ensure that older people can continue to live independently and safely at home for as long as possible? That they can continue to drive their own car? Or that they can use public transport when that is no longer possible? To better support occupational therapists working with older people living at home, Leen Bouckaert & her colleagues drew up a clinical guideline. In it, they pour the latest scientific insights on elderly care into concrete recommendations for occupational therapists.

Over the past five years, solid progress has been made in the fight against cancer, but unfortunately, that does not apply to pancreatic cancer. So what makes this cancer so hard to beat? Olaya Lara (VUB) explains this by comparing it to a football match. She also tells you what tactics she figures out to sideline xCT, the Lionel Messi in the pancreatic cancer team. 

Snoring is very annoying in itself (especially for roommates), but sometimes there is more to it. In some people, the upper airway closes up to 15 times an hour during sleep. This condition has obstructive sleep apnoea. Sara Op de Beeck explains how she wants to use data to help patients get the best treatment, so that it can be quiet in their bedroom again. 😴

Cancer is a sneaky disease. For instance, cancer cells sometimes manage to disguise themselves, outrunning our immune system. Gils Roex (UAntwerpen - FWO) explains how equipping our white blood cells with a cleverly designed CAR could well help win the race against blood cancer. Want to know more? Fasten your seatbelts & watch the video 🏎