dr. Mark Verheijen

Mark Verheijen is Associate Professor of ‘Glial-regulated Neuronal Plasticity’ at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). He was trained as a biologist with specialization biochemistry at Utrecht University, where he also obtained is PhD in developmental biology in 1997. After a post-doc at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, on signal transduction in C. Elegans, he started his neuroscience career in 2000 as a post-doc on Schwann cell biology in the lab of Greg Lemke at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla. In 2004 he returned to the Netherlands to start his own team on Neuron-Glia interactions at the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR) at the VU, were he is also director of the master program Neurosciences. With his research he aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role of glial cells in the regulation of neuronal plasticity in health and disease. For this purpose, his team mainly focusses on the role of perisynaptic astrocyte molecules in learning and memory, and to translate  findings on the diseased tripartite synapse in preclinical disease models, e.g. Alzheimer Disease, mild cognitive impairment, (MCI) and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD). Experiments are being performed both in vitro (e.g. neuron-glial cell cocultures) and in vivo (e.g. proteomic analysis, imaging and genetic manipulation of astrocytes).