Melle de Jonge MSc

Melle de Jonge (2000) started his PhD research in January 2025 within the Molecular Epidemiology department of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), under the supervision of Prof. Ingrid Meulenbelt. His PhD project is part of the ROADMAPS (Revolutionizing OA Drug Discovery with hiPSC-Derived Cartilage Organoids Systems Medicine) project, which is funded by ZonMW and carried out in collaboration with the University of Twente. This project aims to better understand the mechanisms of osteoarthritis (OA) and develop new treatment options.

He started his academic career with a bachelor’s degree in Health and Life at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, followed by a master’s degree in Biology – Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology at Leiden University. During his master’s degree, he did an internship at the Human Genetics department of the LUMC, where he conducted research into genome repair after double-strand DNA breaks induced by CRISPR-Cas9 under the supervision of Prof. Marcel Tijsterman. In his second master’s internship, he worked in the lab of Prof. Annemarie Meijer, where he investigated the protein Gbp1, which is involved in the immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. For this he used zebrafish as a model organism.

In his PhD research he will focus on further unraveling the effects of osteoarthritis risk genes, previously identified by GWAS (genome-wide association studies). He will specifically focus on understanding the downstream effects of these risk genes by mimicking specific gene expression patterns using pooled CRISPRi/a (genetic interference and activation) in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs).