KU Leuven

The University of Leuven is the largest and oldest university in Belgium. The University Hospitals Leuven is the depending University Hospital, which has a capacity of 1900 beds, the largest in the country. The University Hospitals Leuven are very actively involved in clinical transplant care with internationally renowned programs of kidney, heart, lung, pancreas, liver, bowel, bone marrow and composite tissue grafts, and linked basic and translational research in transplantation.
Two departments are participating in the BioMargin project:
- Clinical Department of Nephrology and Renal Transplantation: Since 1963, kidney transplantation has been performed at the University Hospitals Leuven (Belgium), totalling more than 3500 patients. An average of 140 kidney transplantations are performed each year. The unit has been involved: in the major clinical trials with novel immunosuppressive drugs and regimens; and in large multicenter trials on steroid minimization, calcineurin inhibitor avoidance, CMV prophylaxis, etc. Protocol biopsies are routinely performed in all kidney transplant patients at our center, at implantation, 3 months, 1 year, 2 years and 5 years after transplantation.
- Laboratory of Nephrology: The team is involved in translational research in kidney transplantation, and has collected an extensive biobank of: DNA from both donor and recipients, biopsy mRNA and DNA (extracted at our site), serum and plasma samples.

Contact persons active in BioMargin
Dr Maarten Naesens
Prof Dirk Kuypers


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