Lucas Moeskops

Synthetic glucocorticoids (GCs) are widely prescribed to treat various inflammatory and immune disorders, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, COVID-19, and cancer. Every year, over 15 million people in the European Union receive systemic GC treatment.

However, long-term GC use is associated with resistance and severe side effects, such as hyperglycemia, osteoporosis, muscle wasting, mood disturbances, and weight gain. Additionally, GCs are commonly prescribed as a direct treatment for multiple myeloma and as an adjunct therapy in other cancers, including lung cancer. Despite their widespread use, it remains unclear how GCs influence disease progression and treatment response in lung cancers and how GCs result in the cell type-specific signalling of GR.

A deeper, more nuanced understanding of GC-mediated gene regulation could lead to safer, more effective therapies in both the inflammatory and cancer contexts. To achieve this, I will employ multi-modal omics (multi-omics) to integrate multiple layers of biological data across different cell types. Ultimately, we aim to use multi-omics to unravel the complex, cell-type-specific signalling of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and its role in disease.
 

• Lab address: VIB Center for Medical Biotechnology, UGent Department of Biomolecular Medicine, Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 75, 9052 Ghent
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• De Bosscher Lab VIB-UGent
• Lucas Moeskops is interested to receive invitations for presentations or talks