prof.dr. Bas Heijmans

Professor Population Epigenomics

  • Tel.: +31 (0) 71 526 9785

  • B.T.Heijmans@lumc.nl

  • Department of Molecular Epidemiology
    postzone S05-P
    P.O. Box 9600
    2300 RC LEIDEN

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:

Supervised PhD students in their PhD research: