prof.dr. Bas Heijmans

Bas Heijmans (1972) is a researcher in Molecular Epidemiology at the Leiden University Medical Center. He studied molecular biology in Leiden and subsequently obtained his PhD in 2000 at TNO. His current research focuses on identifying genetic and epigenetic changes in DNA that make the difference between health and disease. In that regard, he is interested in the role of early developmental conditions in the development of diseases many decades later. He therefore charts, among other things, which epigenetic changes were caused by prenatal exposure to the Hunger Winter in 1944-45 and how such changes can contribute to an unfavorable cardiovascular disease risk profile in the long term. He combines the application of medium/high-throuput laboratory techniques with data analysis in the setting of Molecular Epidemiology.

Areas of expertise:

• Epigenomics
• Genetics
• Metabonomics

Epigenomic technologies for DNA methylation detection:

• Massa spectrometrie (Epityper, Sequenom)
• Chips (450k methylatie beadchip, Illumina)
• High-throughput bisulfiet sequencing (RRBS)

Study populations:

• Leiden LangLeven Studie
• Hongerwinter Families Studie (Bertie Lumey, Columbia University)
• Netherlands Tweelingen Register (Dorret Boomsma, Vrije Universiteit)
• Deens Tweelingen Register (Kaare Christensen, Univ. Southern Denmark)
• PROSPER (Wouter Jukema, LUMC)
• CAREMA (Edith Feskens, Wageningen University)

Selected publications:

• 2013 Mill&Heijmans Nat Rev Genet.pdf
• 2010 Beekman PNAS.pdf
• 2011 Tobi Epigenetics.pdf
• 2010 Talens FASEB J.pdf

Supervised PhD students in their PhD research:

• Dr René Luijk, dissertation title: ‘From correlation to causation: Data-driven exploration of transcriptional regulation using population genomics‘ in 2019 (cum laude).
• Dr Roderick Slieker, dissertation title: ‘Charting the dynamic methylome across the human lifespan‘ in 2017.
• Dr Jenny van Dongen, dissertation title: ‘(Epi) genetics and twins‘ in 2015 (cum laude).
• Dr Rudolf Talens, dissertation title: ‘Studies into epigenetic variation and its contribution to cardiovascular disease‘ in 2015.
• Dr Anika Vaarhorst, dissertation title: ‘Genetic and Metabolomic approaches for Coronary Heart Disease risk prediction‘ in 2014.
• Dr Elmar Tobi, dissertation title: ‘Epigenetic differences after prenatal adversity : the Dutch hunger winter