Maarten Kamermans
Fellowship 2015
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Maarten Kamermans was trained in biology and (bio)physics and received a cum laude Master degree in Biology. He did his PhD in the laboratory of Medical Physics in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) with Henk Spekreijse and his postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley with Frank Werblin. He received the prestigious Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)-fellowship after his return to the Netherlands. This allowed him to establish the Retinal Signal Processing lab which was initially located in the Netherlands Ophthalmic Research Institute (NORI) and later moved to the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) of the KNAW. Over the years, he secured stable funding for the lab via grants from, amongst others, NWO, ZonMW, HFSP, EU-FP7 and EU-Horizon 2020. He is professor of Neurophysiology specialized in Sensory Physiology at the Academic Medical Center of the UvA and fellow of the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (USIAS). He coordinated the European funded (FP7) consortium RETICIRC. His ~70 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals including Science, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, PLOS Biology and American Journal of Human Genetics have been widely cited in the field.
Human blinding diseases: breaking new ground using a novel small mammal model to analyze cone function and survival
USIAS Fellows : Franck Baas, David Hicks and Maarten Kamermans
Loss of central vision in humans leads to severe handicap; age-related macular degeneration (AMD) represents the 3rd cause of blindness worldwide. The principal cause of sight loss is cone degeneration: cones are concentrated within the macula and provide high acuity chromatic vision. However, detailed study of cone gene expression, structure and function has been greatly hampered by their paucity in mouse models (1-3% cones). The diurnal rodent Arvicanthis ansorgei possesses ~33% cones organised in rows, greatly facilitating their analysis. Arvicanthis are highly resistant to drug- and light-induced retinal toxicity, suggesting the existence of endogenous neuroprotective mechanisms. Using next generation sequencing techniques, the project aims to sequence the Arvicanthis whole genome, and to perform gene expression profiling on cones isolated by laser capture micro-dissection (LCM). Sequence data will be validated by quantitative PCR, and roles of candidate genes will be explored by shRNA knockdown or preparation of knockout mice.
