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Cell-derived microparticles : composition and function
Biró, É.
Publication date
2008
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Biró, É. (2008). Cell-derived microparticles : composition and function.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
247 began working on the projects that have led to the present thesis in February 2000, as a PhD student at the Department of Clinical Chemistry of the Leiden University Medical Center. About a year later, my supervisor and co-supervisor, Guus Sturk and Rienk Nieuwland, together with a part of the research group (including the two PhD students, Mohammed and me), moved to the Department of Clinical Chemistry at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in Amsterdam, and founded the Department of Experimental Clinical Chemistry. This move, and the time lost because of it, resulted in an extension for Mohammed and me as PhD students.
In 2005 all the lab work needed for the studies included in this thesis was finished, two of the studies (Chapters 3 and 4) and a short methodological paper (Chapter 2) were already published, some studies were submitted for publication, and there were a LOT of data still awaiting analysis and publication. (Flow cytometry is a wonderful tool, by the way, but it is extremely labor-intensive, especially when it comes to the analysis of microparticles, and generates an endless amount of data, which all has to be sorted out, typed in and analyzed – the perfect way to get repetitive strain injury.) I began my training to become a clinical chemist in September 2005, and from that moment onwards the analysis of data and writing of manuscripts became a task for in the evenings, during the weekends, and during my vacations. This unfortunately slowed things down a bit, and was often quite tiring, but finally, this thesis is finished! This would not have been possible without the contributions and the support of a long list of people, whom I would now like to thank.
First, Guus Sturk, my supervisor. Guus, thank you for all the time that you have put into this thesis, the support, the ideas, and the great discussions. It always amazes me how you can juggle your endless tasks as a division and a department head and whatever other functions you might have at the moment, and still make time for a research group and PhD students – and be so well-informed, whatever the subject.
Rienk Nieuwland, my co-supervisor. Rienk, thank you for everything you have done to
make these studies possible, the enthusiasm, and the lively discussions, in which you were always searching for a “simple model” with which to explain all our findings, and was never at a loss for thinking up new experiments with which to confirm that model.
Erik Hack. Erik, you have had a big part in all the studies regarding the role of
microparticles in complement activation, and I would like to thank you for that. I also enjoyed the more or less regular research meetings we had together very much, I learned a lot from you.
A special thanks to Loes Pronk for all the lab work she did together with me and for never objecting to experiments for which we sometimes had to stay working until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, to Marianne Schaap, Anita Böing, Yung Ko and Gertie Gorter for their
I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
248
contributions to this thesis, and to Chi Hau and Dennis Snoek for being great colleagues. Also thanks to Fred Romijn, Ria Kolb en Renée Pablo, who stayed in Leiden, but who also had a great part in introducing me to microparticle analyses at the lab.
I would further like to thank Jan Willem Akkerman for the fruitful collaboration on the study investigating the lipid composition of microparticles versus platelet membrane fractions (Chapter 3), and Frans Hoek for all his advice, especially on the HPTLC analyses (Chapters 3 and 5). Also thank you to Gerard Vogel, Dirk Meuleman and Martin Smit as well as to Kyra Maquelin for the collaboration on the in vivo studies (Chapters 4 and 5), and to Hans Aerts together with Carla Hollak for the interesting discussions and for making the study on Fabry patients (Chapter 7), which Anouk Vedder and I did together, possible. I would further like to express my gratitude to Paul Peter Tak for his contribution to the papers on rheumatoid arthritis (Chapters 8 and 9), to Bas de Mol for his contribution to the study on cardiac surgery patients (Chapter 10), and to Joris van der
Post for his contribution to the study on preeclamptic patients (Chapter 12).
A warm thanks to René Berckmans for all his help, advice and support, and also to
Michaela Diamant for the refreshing discussions.
The other PhD students working at / affiliated with our lab: Mohammed Abid Hussein,
Jenny van den Goor, Christianne Lok, Maarten Tushuizen, Marc van der Zee, it’s
been fun working together!
The past 3 years I have been in training to become a clinical chemist at the Department of
Clinical Chemistry in the AMC. I would like to thank all the clinical chemists, those in
training, and the countless other people at the department for their interest in this thesis, and for making this department a place where I work with pleasure.
János Kappelmayer. János, you introduced me as a 3rd year medical student to clinical
chemistry, and inspired me to want to become a clinical chemist myself. I also began participating in research as a medical student under your supervision. My upbringing (having lived abroad so much) resulted in me wanting to go abroad again for a couple of years (which became much longer than a couple of years in the end), so I left your lab, but I would like to thank you for everything that you had done for me.
At this point I would also like to thank the members of the research group, Guus,
Marianne, René, and Rienk, who had helped me settle down in the Netherlands. As it
turned out, apartments here are often rented with a cement floor and five layers of flaking wallpaper and paint on the walls, a situation with which I had never been confronted before, but they helped me enormously with that, with laying floors, putting on new wallpaper,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
249 painting, in the meantime introducing me to Praxis (where you can buy all the supplies necessary)… Thank you all for that!
And last, but definitely not least, my friends and family:
Noriko Yabe. Dear Noriko, you and I, a Japanese and a Hungarian girl, became friends 21
years ago in the United States. It’s actually a miracle that after having left the United States a year later (i.e. 20 years ago) to live on opposite sides of the globe, we now both live in the Netherlands. I am extremely happy to have you as my best friend and am thrilled that you are also here, within reach. Growing up, I had changed schools on average every 1.2 years (i.e. I had changed schools 10 times in 12 years), and had lost contact with many-many friends throughout those years because of moving so often, which makes our friendship of 21 years even more special. Thank you for standing at my side as my ‘paranimf’ on November 18!
There is someone else I would like to mention who has been very important to me and who has seen me through the first two and a half years of research for this thesis, but was then tragically killed in a car accident: Andrea Csicsóvszki, whom I met at the beginning of medical school, and who became a dear friend that I miss very much and will never forget.
Anneke Wiersma. Dear Anneke, you’ve been a wonderful friend for the past couple of
years, which I am again extremely happy with. Thank you for all the great times we had together, for all your support, and for simply being who you are! And thank you for also being my ‘paranimf’ and standing at my side on November 18!
My parents to whom this thesis is dedicated, and my brother and sister. There is one
big thing I realized since I moved to the Netherlands (besides the fact that I will never get ‘de’ and ‘het’ 100% right, though maybe I should consider putting more effort into it than the two one-week intensive Dutch language courses that I took in 2000): That no matter how easy and fun it was going abroad all those times with you when I was a child (only leaving again was always difficult), doing it by myself, without a family with me, is different. Less easy and less fun. I miss all of you and wish I could be there for all the weekend lunches, the birthdays, or whatever other occasions you spend together. But even from a distance, you have always been there for me, supported me, and stimulated me. THANK YOU.
