De Vrij lab

Our group is part of the Kushner lab, based in the Erasmus MC Medical Center in Rotterdam at the Department of Psychiatry where we study the underlying biological mechanisms of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. We use human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) as a technique to obtain living human brain cells mimicking brain development in a dish. We have established a variety of hiPSC models for obtaining defined brain cell types and neural networks. Comparison of control and diseased human brain cells and organoids allows us to study and manipulate human neurobiological mechanisms, focusing on genetic candidate variants for psychiatric disorders.