prof. Kris Gevaert (PhD)

As proteins are among the main molecular players in cells, their in-depth study is important for cancer research as in cancers, proteins are frequently (de)regulated or mutated. My group has introduced and applied novel technologies for comprehensive analysis and quantification of cellular proteins; the proteomes. We focus our proteome studies on the analysis of several protein modifications such as protein phosphorylation by kinases, protein ubiquitination and protein processing by proteases. In addition, we are particularly interested in N-terminal proteoforms that result from different usage of translation initiation codons amongst others. We use high-end mass spectrometers for identifying proteins with deregulated levels among different proteomes, allowing us to spot potential protein biomarkers. Classical and novel affinity purification-mass spectrometry (AP-MS) approaches are used to map the composition of protein complexes in which most, if not all, proteins reside and exert their functions. We are particularly interested in protein biogenesis and combine ribo-seq data with positional proteomics data to map different N-terminal proteoforms and try to understand their functions. More recently, we implemented thermal proteome profiling proteomics for identifying the targets (and off-targets) of small molecule drugs and started clinical proteome studies in which we focus on disease-specific protein markers.
 

• prof. Kris Gevaert (PhD) - group leader, senior full professor
• dr. Maria Esperanza Fernandez Fernandez (PhD) – post-doctoral researcher
• dr. Jade Hawksworth (PhD) – post-doctoral researcher
• dr. Tijs Merckaert (PhD) - post-doctoral researcher
• dr. Marcel Bühler (PhD) - post-doctoral researcher
• Tine Claeys - doctoral fellow
• Jarne Pauwels - doctoral fellow
• Chloé Van Leene - doctoral fellow
• Laura Van Moortel - doctoral fellow
• Sam Calis - doctoral fellow
   

• 'Limited Evidence for Protein Products of Noncoding Transcripts in the HEK293T Cellular Cytosol'. Mol Cell Proteomics, 2022. (PMID: 35788065)
• 'Robust sequential biophysical fractionation of blood plasma to study variations in the biomolecular landscape of systemically circulating extracellular vesicles across clinical conditions'. J Extracell Vesicles, 2021. (PMID: 34429857)
• 'Mass spectrometry-based clinical proteomics - a revival'. Expert Rev Proteomics, 2021. (PMID: 34196253)
• 'Mass spectrometry and the cellular surfaceome'. Mass Spectrom Rev, 2021. (PMID: 33655572)
• 'Prune-1 drives polarization of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) within the lung metastatic niche in triple-negative breast cancer'. IScience, 2020. (PMID: 33426510)
• 'An AKT2-specific nanobody that targets the hydrophobic motif induces cell cycle arrest, autophagy and loss of focal adhesions in MDA-MB-231 cells'. Biomed Pharmacother, 2020. (PMID: 33378961)
• 'Integrator restrains paraspeckles assembly by promoting isoform switching of the lncRNA NEAT1'. Sci. Adv., 2020. (PMID: 32923585)
• 'N-Terminal Proteoforms in Human Disease'. Trends Biochem Sci., 2020. (PMID: 32001092)
• 'A Well-Controlled BioID Design for Endogenous Bait Proteins'. J. Proteome Res, 2019. (PMID: 30525648) 
• 'Mutations in LZTR1 drive human disease by dysregulating RAS ubiquitination'. Science, 2018. (PMID: 30442762)
   

• Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 75, B9052 Ghent, Belgium
• VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology
• Department of Biomolecular Medicine, UGent
• Gevaert lab
• VIB Proteomics Core
• X (former Twitter)