Uncategorized – Verhelst Lab

PhD Graduation Tim

admin — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 07:37:53 +0000

On April 26, 2019, Tim Van Kersavond, who performed his PhD research in the Verhelst Lab at the Leibniz Institute for Analytical Sciences (Dortmund) successfully defended his thesis at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Congratulations! Tim will continue with a post-doc position at Ghent University, Belgium.

The defence began with a presentation of Tim’s work

ABPP2019

admin — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 07:23:03 +0000

From March 27-29, 2019, we hosted the 12th annual Activity-based protein profiling symposium in Leuven, organized by Martin Witte (University of Groningen), Pieter Van Der Veken (University of Antwerp), Ingrid Vandemeulebroucke and Steven Verhelst (KU Leuven).

With a more than 40% increase in participants and twice as many posters, the meeting has grown substantially since last year. The crowd was very international, with participants from 14 different countries and 32 different cities.

Below you will find some impressions of the meeting.

The meeting was held in the Auditorium of the Second Law

The postersessions and breaks were held in the “Machine room” adjacent to the auditorium

There were two Belgian beers with our own symposium label, brewn by microbrewery De Vlier in Holsbeek

Poster prize winners Henry benns (Imperial College London; 2nd prize), Anthe Janssen (Leiden University; 1st prize) and Isabelle Pickles (University of Leeds, 3rd prize)

New publications

admin — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 10:35:56 +0000

Marta’s paper on solubilization of rhomboid proteases in lipid nanodiscs by using amphipathic polymers was accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc.

The review of Suravi, Jan Pascal, Merel and Roeland on recent advances in activity-based protein profiling of proteases will appear soon in a special issue of Current Topics in Microbiology & Immunology.

Congrats to all authors!

Welcome undergraduates!

admin — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 13:34:23 +0000

This week, four undergraduate students have joined our lab. Julia Miedes Aliaga from the University of Barcelona will perform an Erasmus internship with Marta, Rafal Mendowicz, freshly graduated from Lodz University of Technology, will perform an internship with Jian, also supported by the Erasmus Program. Stijn Lenders and Eline Swinnen, both students in chemistry at KU Leuven, will perform their MSc thesis with Jan Pascal and Roeland, respectively. We wish them all the best with their projects!

University trail

admin — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 13:06:27 +0000

On September 13, 2019, KU Leuven organized the University Trail: a 5k walk, 5k run or 10k run on the Arenberg University campus in leuven. Roeland, Jan Pascal and Steven ran the 10k trail, and Hester, together with members from the neighboring laboratory of Dynamics in Biological Systems. See here for some footage on the regional TV.

10 years

admin — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 12:34:02 +0000

July 2018, the Verhelstlab celebrates its 10th year anniversary! On the 1st of July, 2008, Steven started his lab at the Technical University Munich, in an (almost) empty labroom at the Lehrstuhl Chemie der Biopolymere on the Freising-Weihenstephan campus. Because of the helpful colleagues here, the lab got up and running quite rapidly.
10 years later, the lab has relocated to the University of Leuven, Belgium, with a small second part of the lab at the Leibniz Institute for Analytical Sciences ISAS, in Dortmund, Germany.
Some highlights of the last 10 years include the development of novel inhibitors and activity-based probe for rhomboid proteases and the development and application of cleavable linkers for chemical proteomics applications. Also several collaborations have initiated new directions in our laboratory, such as MALT1 activity-based probes and fluorescent probes to visualize polyamine transport.
More exciting research results are in the pipeline, so stay tuned for upcoming papers and another future 25 years of Verhelstlab!

New co-workers spring 2018

admin — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 13:15:48 +0000

In spring 2018, we have welcomed three new co-workers. Dr. Snezhana Akpunarlieva joined as post-doctoral fellow in March 2018. She has previously done a PhD in proteomics at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Dr. Dimitris Korovesis joined the lab in May 2018, after a PhD in cancer studies at King’s college London, UK. Dr. Hester Beard, who recently graduated in chemical biology at the University of Leeds, UK, joins the lab mid-June 2018.

New publications

admin — Wed, 02 May 2018 13:38:25 +0000

Recently, Minh Nguyen’s paper about a novel method for protease specificity profiling using proteome-derived peptide libraries and tip-based substrate enrichment was accepted in the Journal of Proteome Research. The paper of Roeland Vanhoutte and Jan Pascal Kahler, both shared first authors, on novel clickable polyamine derivatives as probes for the polyamine transport system was featured on the inside back cover of ChemBioChem. Congrats to all authors!

Conference visits

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 11:57:10 +0000

Roeland, Jian and Steven visited the ABPP2018: Target Discovery using Chemical Probes symposium in Oxford, UK on March 21-23, 2018. Steven presented a poster with an overview of lab topics, and the abstracts of Roeland and Jian were both selected for talks.

Marta visited the Membrane Proteins in Health and Disease conference in Banff, Canada from April 11-15, 2018 with the SMALP 2018 conference as pre-meeting. She presented a poster and her work was selected for a short talk.

New rhomboid inhibitors

admin — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 09:24:24 +0000

Jian Yang’s paper on benzoxazinones as novel rhomboid inhibitors has now been published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters. Congrats!

Two other papers on rhomboid inhibitors have recently also appeared with collaboration from Minh Nguyen of our lab. The research group of Dr. Kvido Strisovsky reported on ketoamides as potent, selective, modular and reversible rhomboid inhibitors. The research group of Prof. Sascha Weggen found N-methylene saccharins as novel rhomboid inhibitors. We expect that with these new scaffolds, study of rhomboid function in cellular environment will become easier.