Dr. Sylvia Le Dévédec is Assistant Professor at the Drug Discovery & Safety division.

More information about Sylvia Le Dévédec

Cell biologist from education, light microscopist from experience, I have acquired significant experience in drug discovery and safety using imaging as a key technology to get mechanistic insight in disease development. Manager of our High-Content imaging platform at the Cell Observatory and team player in our research division, I am also a fervent advocate of Open Science and very active in the FAIRification process of our imaging core facility.

Light microscopy has been the guiding theme in my academic career. During my master at the University of Amsterdam in the lab of Prof. R. van Driel (under supervision of Dr. PJ Verschure), I used confocal microscopy to determine the functional organization of nuclear bodies in cancer cells. After a break of few years working in the industry and traveling around the world on a bike, I decided to return to my first interest: look how fascinating are cells when studied through a microscope. During my PhD project in the lab of Prof. B. van de Water at the University of Leiden, I have been interested in how adhesion to the extracellular matrix regulates the behaviour of normal and cancer cells. I used various microscopy techniques including FRAP, FLIP, FRET, TIRF and intravital imaging. In recent years, I have helped for the expansion of the microscopy infrastructure of the Division of Toxicology. Nowadays, all the microscopes are housed at the Cell Observatory, a stimulating environment where bio-imaging and bioinformatics are integrated in a shared facility for Life Science at Leiden University.

Research Interests: all kind of light microscopy techniques (functional high-content imaging), image analysis and data management, assay development for 2D and 3D phenotypic screening, integration of Multi-Omics data. Actively involved in the development of an optical metabolic imaging platform for understanding further cancer metabolism. We also aim at using this metabolic imaging for safety assessment in dedicated cell models such as kidney organoids.

Research Management: ‘it is all about metadata and well annotated data’. FAIR data management with a special focus on large bio-imaging datasets (lab data management/SOP writing/Database OMERO/data life cycle/standards for FAIR data).

Teaching: actively involved in the Bachelor and Master Bio-Pharmaceutical program as well as PhD program of Leiden University. As a teacher and supervisor, I value and enjoy my work in helping young students developing in bright scientists.

Coordinator of the third year BSc course ‘Functional genomics: from Genotype to Phenotype’ (minor ‘Disease, Signaling and Drug Targets' (DSDT))

Publications