Videos

Of the 100 potential drugs that companies develop, only a small fraction make it to your medicine cabinet. The majority are rejected after disappointing cell and animal tests. Stijn Dilissen (Uhasselt) is working on a method to find out more quickly and cheaply whether a drug will work or not.

In a heart attack, certain heart cells are damaged and they will never recover. So a patient is forever left with a scar on his heart, which will reduce the heart's pumping power. Could stem cells be the solution? Lize Evens (Hasselt University) explains it to you in this video.

What if you could help someone with dementia by giving them a big, old hug? Might sound crazy, but neuroscientist Philippos Koulousakis (UHasselt) explains why he looks at oxytocin, aka 'the hugging hormone', to boost the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Cancer patients often become heart patients. This is because chemotherapy affects not only cancer cells but also healthy cells, such as the heart muscle cells. In order to prevent heart damage after chemotherapy, we first need to know what factors increase the risk of heart damage. And that is what Sibren Haesen (Uhasselt) has made his mission. With his Ph.D., he wants to help ensure that today's cancer patients do not become tomorrow's heart patients.

An unborn child is exposed to air pollution even before he or she breathes for the first time. This is shown by the research of Eva Bongaerts (UHasselt). She found soot particles in the placenta of women who were only 12 weeks into their pregnancy. Watch the video.

Did you ever enjoy a nicely packed fruit salad with an easy-peel lid? It's a beautiful display of packaging technology: the packaging is strong enough to protect your food, yet at the same time very easy for you to open once you want to dive in. Bram Bamps (UHasselt) explains how he optimizes heat-sealing packaging to keep our food safe and to ensure long shelf life.

Millions of people worldwide suffer from 'invisible' diseases such as chronic widespread pain and chronic fatigue syndrome, which makes patients feel ill for days or even weeks after a small effort, such as washing their hair. Jolien Hendrix (VUB - KU Leuven) tries to understand these diseases by looking at epigenetics. Epi what?! Well, you can see this as DNA paperclips as Jolien explains vividly in this video!

Imagine not being able to feel a hug anymore. This is what happens to some patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT1A). They get weaker muscles, their muscles die and sometimes they even lose the sense of touch. In order to research the disease more quickly and efficiently, Karen Libberecht (UHasselt - VIB - FWO) studies her patients ... in a petri dish. She explains how that works exactly in this video.

"The cemetery was the place where Jewish life was concentrated at the end. It was the place where people went to sunbathe, children had to play, ..." Literature scholar Annelies Augustyns (VUB - UAntwerp - FWO) studied German-Jewish diaries from WWII for her PhD. These offer a glimpse into the "everyday" life of Jews in the Third Reich.

Hard sciences, such as physics, understand very well how the material world works and have contributed to enormous technological progress. But the social sciences, such as economics or sociology, do not seem to understand as well how the social world - human society - works. Thus, we apparently do not know how to build a peaceful and prosperous society worldwide. Michael Bauwens (UAntwerpen) tries to find out which fundamental assumptions researchers should use to do social science.

Radiation can save the lives of people with head and neck cancer. Unfortunately, many patients develop swallowing disorders as a result of the treatment, which makes it impossible for them to eat solid food. Leen Van den Steen (UAntwerpen - UZA) wants to help them. How? With tongue strength training.

Biologist Sébastjen Schoenaers (UAntwerpen) watches his son Ferre grow rapidly. Yet Ferre grows 150 times slower than an ordinary corn leaf 🌱 We still don't understand how plants do this. Sébastjen zooms in on the plant up to molecular level to figure out how it really grows 🔬 This can help us grow plants better and faster.