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Dr. M.R. de Vries

Assistant Professor of Experimental Vascular Surgery

margreet de vries

Research

My motivation for my professional career is to contribute in a meaningful way to society in the form of translational research in the cardiovascular research field. Pathologies in this field affect the majority of the world population. My research focuses on vascular remodeling, regenerative vascularisation and vascular imaging. Using in vitro and especially in vivo models and the latest imaging techniques such as photoacoustics, ultrasound and multiphoton imaging, atherosclerotic processes, vascular remodeling and the crosstalk of immune cells and vascular cells is studied. I have close collaborations with clinicians to stay focused on the translational aspect of the research and I am an international recognized expert on vascular remodeling and microsurgical experimental animal models as shown by my extensive international collaborations and visits to various international research groups.

Developing non-invasive multimodal imaging techniques to study early ischemic and postinterventional responses and simultaneously acquiring insight into the vessel wall composition and immune interactions will provide a new layer of knowledge to the research and insights in long term patency and future therapeutic strategies. The non-invasive image analysis including artificial intelligence methods to analyse the images that we will develop, will give new insights that can readily be transferred to all kinds of research fields.

Curriculum Vitae

During my early career at the Dutch applied scientific organization TNO, my interest in cardiovascular disease was triggered. I started my scientific career at the vascular surgery department. In my PhD thesis (2014) I established that innate immunity members including mast cells and complement factors drive vascular remodeling in vein graft disease. During my post-doc period, I focused on plaque angiogenesis and its contribution to plaque instability. From 2015 on I am a visiting professor at the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Endovascular Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA where I work on novel in vivo imaging strategies and dietary restriction. I was part of a Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions Innovative Training Network program (MoglyNet) focusing on the metabolism of plaque angiogenesis. Now as an assistant professor my research focuses on the crosstalk of immune cells and vascular cells with a focus on real time imaging using ultrasound and photoacoustics together with 3 PhD students (1 LUMC MD/PhD grant, the 2019 Rembrandt grant and a Health~Holland PPP grant for the NIPAC project, 2021).

Recent publications