This year, the Dutch Heart Foundation received 78 applications. Ten researchers were awarded the prestigious grant, of which Amsterdam Neuroscience researcher Inge Mulder is one of them. With the grants, the Dutch Heart Foundation enables researchers to make the next step in their careers. The Dekker grant helps them to set up and expand their own line of research.
Acute ischemic stroke treatment
For several years now, specialists have been able to remove the clot from a brain vessel with a catheter after ischemic stroke, called (mechanical) thrombectomy. This procedure resulted in a significant breakthrough in the treatment of people who have suffered a major stroke, thanks to the MR CLEAN study. However, many patients still have an unfavorable outcome, since the blood flow to the brain often does not completely recover after such a procedure. This is partly due to incomplete reperfusion of the smaller vessels, despite successful clot removal. With the awarded Postdoc Dekker grant, Inge Mulder (dept. of Biomedical Engineering and Physics) will investigate dysfunction in the smaller arteries during occlusion and after thrombectomy.
Improving thrombectomy efficacy
Inge Mulder wants to unravel the spatio-temporal (micro-)vascular behavior both during stroke and after thrombectomy. She hopes that the experimental and clinical data gathered in this project will form a fundament for new adjunctive therapies to improve thrombectomy efficacy and patient outcome. Therefore, she will work together with Prof. Ed van Bavel (Dept. Biomedical Engineering & Physics, AMC), Prof. Elga de Vries (Dept. Molecular Cell Biology & Immunology, VUmc) and Dr. Jonathan Coutinho (Neurology, AMC).
Read about the awarded Dekker projects on the website of the Dutch Heart Foundation.