Translational Neuroimmunology

Our group has a special interest in autoimmune disorders of the neuromuscular synapse and the unique role of IgG4 (auto)antibodies.

January 28th, 2025

Today was a nice day for a group lunch. We welcomed our new team members: William, Myrthe, Ramin, Camilla and Joan, and said goodbye to Cornieke (as she is finishing her internship).

January 9th, 2025

Congratulations to our own Dana! She won the thesis award by Spierziekten Centrum Nederland for her work on the two faces of MuSK antibody pathogenicity in myasthenia gravis.

December 29, 2024

The Dutch Prinses Beatrix Spierfonds wanted to make a series of short videos to give insights into research on muscle diseases. Off course Maartje was happy to participate! Watch the full video here.

December 16th, 2024

We are very excited that the clinical studies have started with ARGX-119, the MuSK agonist molecule we’re co-developing with Argenx. Currently ARGX-119 is being tested as a treatment for both congenital myasthenic syndrome (CMS) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

December 12th, 2024

Congratulations to Laurent for winning the Dutch Society for Immunology poster prize! Selected out of 235 posters. Well done, Laurent!

November 19th, 2024

Maartje won the LUMC C.J. Kok prize for mid career excellence!! We still need to celebrate this with some champagne. Goes without saying our work is a team effort and the prize belongs to the lab!

The LUMC research conference was also a very interesting event to attend and see what diverse and inspiring research is being conducted at our institute. Highly recommended for next year to all.

Oktober 5th, 2024

Part of the team including some of our partners and Maartje’s kids participated in the “Oranjepad” event organized by the Prinses Beatrix Spierfonds www.hetoranjepad.nl. With a walk through the woods of 10k or 20k we generated funds for neuromuscular research. The weather was great, the atmosphere perfect and we all made it to the finish lines!

September 14th

Today, patients with myasthenia gravis had an unique opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at our research labs during the Spierziekten Nederland patient day. Oscar and Dana showed them where we culture muscle cells, and that we can measure how many MG antibodies they have in their blood by creating yellow colors on an ELISA plate. It was inspiring to meet the patients and listen to their stories.

September 11th, 2024

When the lab team and clinical team meet up, it's a recipe for a good time! We had our first joint outing and it was a success. To do some team building we became rock bands, did some laser gaming, and finished with a very tasty dinner.

August 21st, 2024

It was time for our yearly group outing. We started the day with a brainstorm in a “Disney room”. We discussed novel scientific ideas without the constraints of the real world.

We continued with a creative afternoon. We poured, splattered and threw with paint and created 3 beautiful canvases that will bright up our offices. We also left our mark on the room. ;-)

We closed the day with a picnic, some games in the park and a nice dinner in Woerden.

June 26th, 2024

Celebrating our students! We welcomed Cornieke (who just started her internship) and said goodbye to Danique (who is finishing her internship) with a vegan burger lunch. The weather was tropical, the food was delicious and the supervisors were proud!

Danique Stassen
Maartje Huijbers Key Note Speaker Antibody Engineering and Therapeutics Europe

June 4th, 2024

Maartje will give (her first!) Keynote lecture at the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Europe conference next week in London. She will share our excitement about “The Peculiar Features of IgG4 MuSK Antibodies and How They Can Be Used As Therapeutics” with the audience.

April 2nd, 2024

Happy to share that Olena’s paper “Change of voltage-gated sodium channel repertoire in skeletal muscle of a MuSK myasthenia gravis mouse model” was accepted at European Journal of Neuroscience! And with that comes a special edition of cake :). Superproud of Olena and team for finishing this long and challenging project which was supported by my first ever grant princess Beatrix muscle fund.

March, 2024

The Gordon conference on antibody biology and engineering was held in Barga Italy this year. Dana and Maartje had a great time listening to some mindblowing new science methods in this field as well as learning some new insights on antibody biology that will alter text books. Did you know that IgM actually comes in different forms and clones depending on the bodily fluid it’s measured in? Or that there are mice out there that produce fully human antibodies including the variable regions? Neither did we! Aside from all that we also had a chance to share our data, make some great new connections and see the surroundings during some hikes. For all interested in this field I highly recommend the next conference in two years from now in Ventura!

January 11th, 2024

NL-NMD research symposium: Always fun to catch up on all the exciting neuromuscular research in The Netherlands and to talk to our colleagues again. Also a great opportunity to share our research. Robyn and Olena did an awesome job presenting their >2 years of work in 5 minutes.

December 12th, 2023

NeuroImmunology Christmas drinks! A time to reflect, a time to have fun and a time to play games together. Luckily the 50 bitterballs were supplied with sufficient mayonaise thanks to Olena and mocktails thanks to Oscar.

November 4th, 2023

Yet another highlight for our team this year! A joint effort to explain IgG4 predominance in IgG4-AID was just published online at Clinical Immunology. In this study we immunophenotyped the B cell compartment in dept of patients from 4 different IgG4-AIDs and compared them to 2 IgG1-3-AIDs patient groups and matched healthy donors. Main conclusion: the IgG4-predominance in IgG4-AID must be antigen driven, as these patients don’t have abnormal IgG4 memory or plasma cell numbers. Enjoy the read! This calls for a cake!

5-8 September, 2023

Maartje was invited to talk at The Antibody Society 2023. It was an inspiring conference because of very interesting lectures on novel methods to optimize antibody binding, thresholding of antibody binding or optimizing effector functions. Much food for thought. The organization and location (Vidago Palace in Portugal) was also worth the travel as you can see :)

September, 2023

On the first of September our team welcomed a new team member: Manon! We’re very happy that she’ll be working on setting up the tonsil organoid model for our lab and support our team with the day to day lab business. Unfortunately, the dog in the picture is not part of the team yet, but after seeing this picture we’re seriously considering to put an add out for a labdog as well!

August 25th, 2023

Today we celebrated our teams accomplishments with our yearly team outing. Oscar was kind enough to introduce us to his cocktail/mocktail mixing talents in the backyard of Maartje’s renovated home. After this “hard” work we had tapas and got to know night live in rural Voorschoten.

June 30th, 2023

Congrats to Laurent and Yvonne for submitting their work investigating the B-cell compartment in patients with IgG4 autoimmune diseases. [Link]

April 7th, 2023

Congrats to Jamie and Roy for publishing their work on agonistic a-MuSK antibodies in Scientific reports! A special nerdy cake with the manuscript figures on it was eaten to celebrate. [Link]

March 30th, 2023

Today we surprised Maartje has she has been 12.5 years in service at the LUMC. Of course this had to be celebrated!

March 7th, 2023

Congrats to Dr. Dana Vergoosen! Today, she successfully defended her thesis and was awarded her doctorate cum laude. We’re very proud of her achievement and glad we could celebrate this with her!

February, 2023

The MuSK agonist molecule we’re co-developing with Argenx has been dosed in the first healthy donor! [Link]