Sam Davidse is a PhD candidate at the division of Drug Discovery and Safety (DDS) under supervision of Prof. Dr. Bob van de Water and Dr. Lukas Wijaya. I started my PhD at the beginning of 2023 after obtaining my BSc and MSc in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences from Leiden university. I did my master internships at the Leiden academic center for drug research (LACDR) and Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). At the LACDR I worked on morphological profiling techniques using reporter cell lines to link structural changes in cell morphology to chemical risk. At the LUMC I contributed to kidney injury biomarker discovery through transcriptomics based approaches and immunohistochemical staining of human and rat kidney tissue. During my PhD at DDS I am working within the RISKHUNT3R consortium (https://www.risk-hunt3r.eu/) on developing new approach methodologies (NAMs) for the reduction and replacement of animal testing in chemical risk assessment. My focus is currently on the development of NAMs employing human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) based phenotypic reporters and the analysis of morphological reporter data. As a part of our stem cell team I am currently working on creating and validating new adaptive stress response reporter cell lines using hiPSCs. These models could allow for high throughput in vitro chemical risk assessment specific for any target organ. In parallel we have constructed a series of morphological reporters that can show changes in the shape and location of organelles. We aim to associate changes in in vitro organelle morphology with possible adverse outcomes in patients making the morphological reporter a relevant tool for the predition of chemical hazard.

More information about Sam Davidse

Projects:

• RISKHUNT3R