Hugo VANKELECOM

Prof. Dr. Hugo Vankelecom is a full professor at KU Leuven (Belgium), leading a team of 15 people (PhD, postdoc, Master, technician). He is a leading expert in tissue 3D organoid modeling, thereby being the top and most visible research group in this booming field at the KU Leuven.

Vankelecom’s research is situated in women’s health (endocrine-reproductive biology and disease). The group established multiple organoid protocols and is creating organoid biobanks covering a broad spectrum of diseases. The Vankelecom group was the first to establish organoids from the womb’s lining (endometrium) and endometrial diseases, as well as from ovary tissue (cancer) and pituitary gland (mouse), all powerful tools to decipher the (patho-)biology of these essential female endocrine-reproductive organs. In addition, the team advanced the endometrial organoid tool into an innovative in vitro embryo implantation model. All these organoid models provide powerful preclinical tools for disease modeling and its mechanistic decoding, therapeutic discovery, drug screening and regenerative medicine, as well as for (repro-)toxicity screening (given the availability of the healthy control counterpart organoids). Moreover, the team is further advancing the models into composite assembloids and organ(oid-)on-chip configurations. The strong organoid expertise instigates increasing numbers of (interdisciplinary) collaborations in several domains of women’s health. Moreover, Vankelecom, together with Dr. Frauke Christ and Prof. Marianne Carlon, created the interdisciplinary ‘organoid@KUL’ platform, a vibrant ecosystem of 3D tissue modeling research and expertise bringing together all KU/UZ Leuven (and beyond) research groups interested in these cutting-edge technologies. Vankelecom is also co-founder of several KU Leuven Core Facilities (FACS, PDTX, …), and is valorising the team’s organoid results toward start-up creation (e.g. biotech start-up incorporated August 2020 through LRD aimed at improving IVF success rate using endometrial organoids (currently in stand-by); CurE-me project toward spin-off creation - KU Leuven-BioInnovation Institute (BII, Copenhagen)).