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.

Have you ever enjoyed a delicious smoothie? The way this tasty drink is made has similarities to how Alzheimer's disease research has been approached in the past decades. In this video, Lara De Deyn explains why she chooses a fruit salad approach in her research. A very nice metaphor to tell how Alzheimer's disease research is evolving.

Why do people get cancer, arthritis, or Alzheimer's? Essentially because a protein key in our body does not fit in its respective lock. This is why Alvaro Martin is looking at removing defective keys and designing new protein keys. Keys that fit and can open the necessary locks, so that for example, our immune cells target and kill cancerous cells. "Protein design can be the key to unlocking a future without diseases."

In the few minutes you watch this video, you breathe in thousands of fine dust particles. And did you know that this particulate matter can be found in your brain as early as 24 hours later? Biomedicist Kenneth Vanbrabant counts particulate matter particles in brain sections of deceased people. In this way, he wants to gather enough evidence so that governments can draw up better regulations for our air quality.

Did you know that exercising is not only good for your health, but also has a positive impact on your immune system? Only scientists don't know exactly why. Lena Fonteyn dives deeper into the mystery of myokines - substances your muscle cells produce during exercise. "If we can unravel this secret, we can help you train your immune system and maybe reach 100 in a healthy way!"

Fighting cancer with wisdom teeth - it almost sounds like the tooth fairy's fairy tale. And yet it is a fairy tale that could well come true. Jolien Van den Bosch (UHasselt) wants to use stem cells from wisdom teeth to develop a new therapy against cancer. One could even say she's fighting ... tooth and nail to make this happen.

Meet Sarra Zaghbouni. She unleashes nano-sized diamonds to decode the brain's secrets! 💎🧠 Teaming up with physicists, she's creating these tiny carbon heroes that sense and control temperature, allowing her to study how this affects the growth of neurons 🌡️ This research could help accelerate healing after brain injuries!

A stupid accident, cancer, or a hernia - it can all cause a spinal cord injury in which certain parts of your body are then paralysed. But there is also a hidden effect - an effect in the blood, explains Naomi Veeningen (UHasselt) 🩸

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".