Pieter-Jan Brysse, William Decoster, and Orphee Goossens are pursuing a Master of Science in Drug Development, while Maïté De Visscher is studying for a Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Care.
Their visit at NIOM is part of the Erasmus+ EU program for education, training, youth and sport, and during their stay the students perform the practical work for their master theses. The topics they are working on are multidisciplinary and aim to
- Find out if nicotine influences bacterial signaling, which in turn may affect formation of oral biofilm
- Show that methacrylate monomers, which are commonly used in dental composites, can conjugate to the protein beta-actin
- Investigate how fast and to what extent methacrylate monomers conjugate to cellular proteins and how this affects the cells
- Explore the impact of methacrylate monomers on the differentiation of human monocytes into macrophages