Congratulations to Valeriya Malysheva et al. on their new paper in Nat Genetics! 🎉 Using 3D genome mapping in rare immune cells, the team identified more than 100 genes linked to Crohn’s disease risk, including the unexpected immune role of CLN3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-026-02681-0

A closer look at the beauty of science. This week’s image is “Montage 06” by one of our microscopy experts: Simona Manzella. 🤩 One image, one moment to pause, look closely, and appreciate the visual world revealed through research. #MicroscopyMonday

In just 16 weeks (!), the neuroimmunology community is coming to Antwerp for #Neuroimmunology26! 🤩 👉 November 19 and 20 👉 Program: https://www.vibconferences.be/events/neuroimmunology PS: Travel grants available, abstract submissions now open 📸 by Tim Choinowski

Beauty can appear in unexpected places, including under the microscope. 🤩 This week’s entry from the previous CMN imaging contest is called “My enteric plexus”, created by Andriana Lygeraki from the De Schepper lab. #MicroscopyMonday

Teams led by Sarah Weckhuysen, Marije Meuwissen, and An Jansen recently got together to explore how work on genetic epilepsies, neurodevelopmental disorders, cortical malformations, and pediatric neurology can connect more closely. Thanks to everyone who joined! #GENERAte

Last month, the Jordanova lab's work on POLR3A was published in Annals of Neurology. Spearheaded by co-first author Luiza Ramos, the study shows that monoallelic variants in POLR3A can cause a previously unrecognized form of early-onset peripheral neuropathy. https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.78268

We are incredibly proud to share that our director, Rosa Rademakers, has been appointed Commander in the Order of Leopold by His Majesty the King. 🎖️ Congratulations, Rosa!

Sometimes science is simply beautiful. ✨ Ahead of our CMN Day last December, researchers from across the center submitted microscopy images for our imaging contest. Over the summer, we will share a few of them here. First up: “The Milky Way” by Miranda Lastra Osua from the Mancuso lab. 👀

Big congratulations to Fien Vandenberk, PhD student in the Weckhuysen lab, on receiving a research fellowship from the Marguerite-Marie Delacroix Fund for her work on ageing in Dravet syndrome! 👏

Did you know that Marcus Kaji, postdoc in the Weckhuysen lab, won the MEAsterpiece Art Contest organized by Maxwell Biosystems this spring? His submission, described by Maxwell as an “artsy interpretation of the axon tracking assay”, stood out among entries for its originality and visual impact. 🤩

Did you catch Rosa Rademakers on 'Weet ik veel' Academy? A conversation on what dementia is and how genetics is helping us better understand what is going on in the brain. 🎧 https://www.vrt.be/vrtmax/podcasts/radio-1/-/-weetikveel/14/dementie/

Woop woop: the Mancuso lab has been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant! 🎉 🙌 The project explores a bold new idea for Alzheimer’s: engineering transplantable human microglia to clear amyloid-beta aggregates more efficiently and selectively. @erc.europa.eu #ERCPoC @mancusorenzo.bsky.social

Ten days ago, we had the pleasure of bringing together the Belgian CMT community for a day of exchange around Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Thank you to everyone who joined and contributed! It is always so rewarding to interact with the people this research ultimately aims to help.

Last Friday, we held the first CMN PhD Symposium: honest talks from senior PhD students, a great session on stress management by Brecht Polspoel, and a poster session to end the day. Congrats to Amelia Zanchi and Sara de Donder for the poster prizes! 🙌

The Jordanova lab welcomed a Bulgarian TV crew today. 🎬 They visited the lab for a feature on their research into Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) and the major support recently awarded through a 1 million grant from the Generet Foundation. 📸 by Teun De Voeght

52 cohorts, 128,000 cases, 849,000 (proxy) controls 🧬 91 genetic loci associated with disease risk 🧬 including 16 new loci It's the newly published consensus meta-analysis of AD GWASs. Congrats to Kristel Sleegers, Fahri Küçükali and their many collaborators! https://tinyurl.com/bu24hadj!

Great afternoon yesterday at the Royal Palace for the GSKE award ceremony. Huge congratulations again to our awardees: Sarah Weckhuysen, Vincent Timmerman, Dimitra Sokolova, Cristina Vicente, and Sebastiaan De Schepper. 🙌 📸 Group picture with her royal highness Princess Astrid

What should a biobank really be? Not just a freezer. Not just a collection. But a piece of research infrastructure that helps science move faster, smarter, and more collaboratively. https://tinyurl.com/2s46unzn

Our understanding of FTLD has changed a lot over the past decade. In this new longread, we look at one of the key questions driving that shift: how do different FTLD-TDP subtypes differ, and what does that mean for future biomarkers and therapies? https://blog.vib.be/subtyping-a-complex-dementia

Thanks to everyone who took part in the 2026 CMN Hackathon last week at MAS, and who helped make it such a fun and productive couple of days! 🙌

Since we weren’t in Santa Monica, we relived the Breakthrough Prize ceremony right here in Antwerp today. The watched the big moment on a big screen, with drinks, food, and the chance to congratulate Rosa Rademakers in person on this extraordinary recognition. Thank you to everyone who joined!

Three CMN researchers are taking the stage at Pint of Science Antwerp next week. 🍻🧠 18 May: Celeste Laureyssen 19 May: Baukje Bijnens & Jessie Premereur From Alzheimer’s disease to microglia, and everything in between: join us at Filmhuis Klappei. #PintOfScience

New Called to Science episode! ✨ Ayşe Candayan @jordanovalab.bsky.social reflects on her path from Turkey to Antwerp, and on rare disease research, collaboration, and clear scientific communication. 👇 Listen on your favorite platform https://linktr.ee/VIBLifeSciences

We couldn’t be more proud of our director, Rosa Rademakers, who received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences last night in LA. 🤩 📸 Lester Cohen / Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize

Big congratulations to Emanuela Pasciuto on receiving the 2026 Young Researcher Award from Stop Alzheimer / Stichting Alzheimer Onderzoek. 🙌 🎉 The award recognizes her research on microglia–T cell interactions in Alzheimer’s disease and comes with an additional €50,000 in support of this work.

Thrilled to see our work from the past years finally published! We found a novel repeat expansion in the GOLGA8A gene in 60% of the aFTLD-U patients, a rare subtype of frontotemporal dementia. Huge thanks to all collaborators and patients for making this possible. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A repeat expansion in GOLGA8A is a major risk factor for atypical frontotemporal lobar degeneration with ubiquitin-positive inclusions - Nature Genetics

Genome-wide analysis coupled with long-read sequencing identifies a repeat expansion in GOLGA8A associated with high risk for atypical frontotemporal lobar degeneration with ubiquitin-positive inclusi...

nature.com

Big congrats to Albena Jordanova 🎉 on receiving the Generet Prize for Rare Diseases and €1,000,000 to accelerate research into Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). @jordanovalab.bsky.social https://blog.vib.be/1-million-euro-for-research-into-charcot-marie-tooth-disease #rarediseaseday

Double whopper for Dimitra Sokolova from the @pasciutolab.bsky.social: EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship + Queen Elisabeth Medical Foundation Young Researcher Award 🙌 https://blog.vib.be/dimitra-sokolova-studies-astrocytes-microglia-and-t-cells-from-autism-to-alzheimers-disease

Congratulations to Bob Asselbergh, who was named runner-up in the Autumn round of the Four Seasons of the Invisible imaging contest hosted by Euro-BioImaging! 🏆 https://www.eurobioimaging.eu/news/congratulations-to-the-winners-of-the-autumn-imaging-contest/

Parkinson’s may originate in the enteric nervous system, via muscularis macrophages containing misfolded α-synuclein that develop endolysosomal dysfunction & promote T cell expand/traffic to brain www.nature.com/articles/s41... @nature.com @soyonhonglab.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk @cmn-vib.bsky.social