Videos

In 2020, a couple in Kampenhout died of malaria. In Belgium, this is highly exceptional, but worldwide, and especially in Africa, 400,000 malaria deaths, often involving children, occur every year. Leen Vandermosten wants to help reduce malaria deaths. Can injections of glucocorticoids, hormones from the adrenal glands, protect people from a deadly course of malaria infection? That's what Leen wants to figure out!

In Belgium, 10,000 cyclists are injured in traffic accidents every year. While helmets help reduce skill fractures, they often don't protect cyclists from brain injuries. Andrea Menichetti (KU Leuven) studies how much our brain can deform before getting injured in order to help manufacturers produce safer helmets.

Out of breath after just eight steps up the stairs? That is the case every day for the 600,000 people in Belgium with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Physiotherapist Astrid Blondeel (KU Leuven) wants to help them using a personalised coaching programme and a smartphone app.

When you enjoy a day on the beach, you want to make sure to wear sunscreen to avoid sunburn. But did you know that quite a few sunscreens contain nanoparticles to help protect your skin from the sun? The use of nanoparticles is strictly regulated and only a limited amount can be used. Milica Velimirovic (VITO) is developing a new & fast analysis method to measure nanoparticles and their quantity in sunscreen. 

Imagine being sick and simply being able to ask your body what's going on and what it needs to get better. Well, the proteins in our body can tell us that. But it takes a long time for us to understand what they're saying. With his tool, QCquan.net, bioinformatician Joris Van Houtven is determined to speed up that process!

Did you know that being born with low birthweight (< 2.5 kg), increases the risk of a heart attack when you're 50 or older? Rossella Alfano (Uhasselt) examined 500 neonates and found out that babies with low birth weight have less HDL cholesterol, commonly known as 'good cholesterol'.

"We must learn to talk about death, also in the workplace". Xenia Geysemans investigates how employers can better support grieving employees. Currently, employers are often too absent. In this video, Xenia offers 4 concrete tips.

In patients with Alzheimer's, microglia, the immune cells that protect our brains, suddenly start damaging the brain themselves by eating synapses. Ben Rombaut is trying to find out why this happens. In this way, he wants to help ensure that in our old age we can all stay on our toes.

People who had chickenpox as a child seem to be better protected against herpes zoster, better known as zona or shingles, at a later age. Using mathematic modeling, James Wambua (Hasselt University) is therefore investigating whether it is advisable to vaccinate children in Belgium against this childhood disease.

As if developing a cancer drug is not difficult enough, you still have to successfully get that medicine to the tumor. Tim Bomberna (Ghent University) explains how computer simulations show us the way.

Immune cells serve to protect us. In multiple sclerosis, however, some immune cells just turn against the body and damage the nervous system. Sam Vanherle (Hasselt University) wants to detect these 'bad guys' in patients' blood and get them back on the right track. 💉

Did you know that there are already more than 15 medications for multiple sclerosis? Yet the more than 1 million progressive MS patients do not benefit from them, because these drugs only work in the early stages of the disease. Assia Tiane wants to help unravel the disease in order to improve the quality of life of progressive MS patients.