inquiSTR: a toolkit for accurate and efficient population-scale tandem repeat genotyping and analysis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.731080v1

Very happy to see this massive collaborative effort out! 🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Also on our VIB CMN news portal here: cmn.sites.vib.be/en/news#/new...

Out now in @natgenet.nature.com! Our latest GWAS meta-analysis identifies 91 risk loci for Alzheimer’s, deeply expanding our understanding of its genetic architecture. Proud of our team's contribution to this massive milestone! 🧠🧬🔬 @maegsul.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Last Friday, the KS Lab attended the Stop Alzheimer (SAO) Young Researcher Congress in Mechelen 🧠 During the event, Fahri Küçükali gave an oral presentation and Nicole Natalia Wawrzyniak presented a poster. 📊 Once again, we thank SAO for their continued support of Alzheimer's research in Belgium!

Happy and honoured to receive the Fabrizio Caielli Award from the Carlo Besta Neurological Institute for our recent publication, “Multiomic analyses direct hypotheses for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease risk genes” 🧠🧬 Many thanks to the selection committee for this recognition. 🔗 tinyurl.com/5y7nwp34

Extremely thankful to have our Senior Research Project (with Julie van der Zee and @verwilt.bsky.social) funded in this @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social call! This marks a huge investment into our 1000 Healthy Elderly study in search of novel cell-free biomarkers! 🧠🧬🩸

Join us! 🧠🧬

HIRING ALERT!!! 💥 We are looking for an enthusiastic postdoctoral researcher to uncover Alzheimer's disease mechanisms using state-of-the-art technologies! 🧠🧬 jobs.vib.be/j/128109/pos...

Last Friday, we shared our research with 1st year Master's students at @uantwerpen.be during the Research Day! We loved their genuine interest and look forward to welcoming several of them to our lab next year. Great to see Ph.D. students Kato and Ella share their love for science! 🧪

Consensus meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for Alzheimer's disease and related dementia https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.20.25338060v1

The European Alzheimer & Dementia Biobank (EADB) unites cohorts across 18 countries to decode the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. https://eadb.eu/ At CMN, the @sleegerslab.bsky.social plays a leading role, with postdoc Fahri Küçükali as our in-house EADB specialist. #CMNcohorts #CMNconsortia

1 year of 1000 Healthy Elderly Study! As we are closing in on 200 re-inclusions, we took some time to celebrate this amazing milestone. Find more about our study here: bit.ly/4gV9TLk

One year in, nearly 200 re-inclusions and a clearer picture of healthy brain aging! The 1000 Healthy Elderly Study has become a real engine for discovery. Thanks to all of our volunteers and a special shout-out to Sofie Van de kerckhoven for the excellence at intake and sampling! bit.ly/4gV9TLk

🚨 #PhD opportunity! Sleegers & Rademakers Labs are looking for a PhD candidate to develop biomarkers for neurological disorders by integrating genomics & transcriptomics data🧠🔬 @cmn-vib.bsky.social 📍 Antwerp, Belgium | 💡 Genetics • Bioinformatics • Neuroscience Apply 👉 jobs.vib.be/j/124544/joi...

Join us for this great collaborative PhD project! 😊

Next up in our #CMNcohorts #CMNconsortia series, we spotlight a collaboration between the @sleegerslab.bsky.social#CMNcohorts#CMNconsortiand Dietmar Thal at KU Leuven: a post-mortem brain cohort, now paired with genetic characterization, and transcriptomic profiling underway.

Over the moon to be selected for the Flemish #PhDCup 2025 for my research at @ugent-fge.bsky.social at the OncoRNALab with @jvdesomp.bsky.social and Pieter Mestdagh! @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social

Our postdoc @verwilt.bsky.social is selected for the @scimingo.bsky.social PhD Cup for his research during his PhD! 💥 Let's see how his findings can impact Alzheimer's Disease 🧠🧬🩸 @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social @ugent-fge.bsky.social @cmn-vib.bsky.social @viblifesciences.bsky.social @uantwerpen.be

Big congrats to @verwilt.bsky.social‬ from the @sleegerslab.bsky.social‬ on his FWO fellowship! He’ll be mapping RNA and DNA in blood, CSF, even tear fluid, to develop non-invasive biomarkers for Alzheimer’s using long-read sequencing. https://tinyurl.com/ym6c8csr

🚨Interested in which genes are the true effectors behind the scenes of the #gwas results? 🚨 This new publication in Nature Genetics, a collaboration between @broadinstitute.org @ebi.embl.org @opentargets.org focuses on approaches to predicted effector gene reporting tinyurl.com/98yxy4hf (1/3) 👇

Hi #eshg2025! I’ll be giving the final presentation today on our recent work mapping Alzheimer's disease genetic risk to brain cell-type-specific transcript alterations 🧬🧠 Looking forward to it—see you there! 😄

Ciao Milano! We are happy and excited to be here for #eshg2025 @eshg.bsky.social Come find us during the oral and poster presentations by our team members Fahri Küçükali (@maegsul.bsky.social) & Celeste Laureyssen (@celestelaureyssen.bsky.social) today and tomorrow 🧬 🧠

Look at us! 🤩 We presented the excuting research going on in our lab at the @uantwerpen.be NeuroDay 2025. So great to with fellow neuroscientist! 🧠

A new chapter in our lab has begun! Our postdoc @verwilt.bsky.social has received an FWO Junior Fellowship to look for non-invasive extracellular biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. Stay tuned for some cool research! @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social

YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME! 🥳 Extremely happy to be selected as a Junior FWO Postdoctoral fellowship! Stay tuned for novel extracellular biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease! Can’t wait to jump in these three years! 🧠🩸🧬 #fwo #RNA #cfDNA #alzheimers @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social @sleegerslab.bsky.social

Deciphering distinct genetic risk factors for FTLD-TDP pathological subtypes via whole-genome sequencing www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our lab’s recent hackathon ☕🧠💻 was a success: three packed days, one awesome crew, endless ideas. We built fresh neurogenomics tools and leveled-up team vibes 🚀🧬

🚨 PhD Position Alert! 🚨 We're excited to announce a collaborative PhD opportunity with @uantwerpen.be LEMP, investigating the role of mucin splicing in colorectal cancer. If you're passionate about RNA biology, omics, and translational research, this could be the perfect fit!

Rare, but not alone. Today, we light up for #RareDiseaseDay. We recognize the strength of those living with rare diseases and the science that seeks to understand, diagnose, and treat them. #PatientsFirst 🧬 💙

Exciting news! Our paper on GWAS gene prioritization for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is now published in Brain! 🧠🧬 @brain1878.bsky.social We leverage eQTL and pQTL catalogues to identify prioritized risk genes with potential roles in prion disease. Check it out here: academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

New paper on risk genes for sporadic CJD academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

Very happy to see our review on Alzheimer's disease rare genetic variants published in @natrevneurol.bsky.social! 🧠🧬 Huge congrats to our PhD student @laradedeyn.bsky.social 🎉👏✨ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New online! The impact of rare genetic variants on Alzheimer disease https://bit.ly/4hntQtT

🚨 New Review Alert! 🚨 Excited to share our latest in Nature Reviews Neurology! 🧠✨ We explore the impact of rare genetic risk variants on Alzheimer's disease, shedding light on key insights from recent studies. Thank you for this opportunity! #Alzheimers #variants #Review #rarevariant #genetics

From tears to AD biomarkers! @verwilt.bsky.social recently received a 10.000 euro @uantwerpen.bsky.social BOF KP grant to kickstart our research on the biomarker potential of tear fluid RNA in AD! 🥲🧬

Thrilled to see this out! A jax based glm for single cell eqtl mapping! See 👇for details! 🧬

Joint PhD candidate position in the laboratories of Sarah Weckhuysen and Kristel Sleegers at VIB, Antwerp @viblifesciences.bsky.social working on Biomarker Discovery. Closing date: 24th March www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/job/phd-biom...

🎉 Unique opportunity to join our amazing lab as a Ph.D. student for a novel line of research. Work with cool, cutting-edge technologies to solve fundamental problems in AD and epilepsy.

💼💥Ph.D. JOB ALERT!!! Together with the lab of Prof. Weckhuysen, we are looking for a motivated Ph.D. student 🧑‍🎓 to explore the wonders of liquid biopsies and help diagnosing Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy patients 🧠🩸

Urgent - following a withdrawal, we are looking for a research engineer/post-doctoral fellow (contract of at least two years) to take part in the transcriptomics/‘omics’ analyses of our Alzheimer's disease projects. Please do not hesitate to contact me!

multidisciplinarity ✅ collaboration ✅ inquisitive mindset ✅ All crucial ingredients of the 'techno-scientific ecosystem' we're always on about. A great example of what can be accomplished in such an environment is #scywalker, a scalable analysis workflow for long-read SC transcriptome sequencing 👇

A great paper and a great thread! One point that I partcularly liked was this one: "In particular, [GWAS] variants can be trait specific in two ways: they can either affect a trait-specific gene or affect a pleiotropic gene in a context-specific manner."

Dissecting the mechanism of African ancestries-enriched GBA1 risk variant for Parkinson's disease (PD). A cool example to remind we shouldn't always expect 1-1 relationship between RNA and protein expression. 1/ Álvarez Jerez, Wild Crea, et al. Nat Struct Mol Bio www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧠 New insights into the genetic factors that drive Alzheimer’s disease 👉 Read here: vibbio.tech/4izHlYc 🔬 Study led by Prof. Kristel Sleegers of VIB-UAntwerp Center for Molecular Neurology @uantwerpen.bsky.social @alzassociation.bsky.social

Finally out! X‐chromosome-wide association study for Alzheimer. Our new EADB work led by Celine Bellenguez in collaboration with GR@ACE, DEGESCO, EADI, GERAD, DemGene, FinnGen, ADGC and CHARGE. We identified seven X-chromosome-wide significant loci that need further validation. rdcu.be/d2tWv

I have made a new release of kyber, a tool to make a quick sketch of your long-read sequencing data or to compare multiple datasets. It uses a fixed grid of accuracy and read length. Now also supports ubam - feedback appreciated! github.com/wdecoster/ky...

*taps mic* Is this thing on? Should we try a "Who's that causal gene?" 🧪

🤝 Marieke Vromman ⭕️🧬 Very happy to share that our review on extracellular circRNAs is now out in WIREs RNA! We summarize the little that is known, navigate their daunting literature, and dive into hypotheses on their extracellular existence! wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

For the FFBD Faculty Research day, the @UAntwerpen interviewed our Ph.D. student @CelesteLaureys1 on her work on the genetic exploration of Alzheimer’s disease hallmarks . Listen to her explain her research! 🧠🧬https://open.spotify.com/episode/0isr8pKJq9w0GqLJpgrn7n?si=-05SPAOTQHKWZ34_FTIFDQ