Meet GYM: the Generate your Muscle group

Under supervision of prof. dr. Bert Smeets, the Generate your Muscle (GYM) group was formed and is in cooperation with Stichting Voor Sara organizing the conference in November. GYM is a group of ambitious students from Maastricht University participating in the FHML Honours Programme.

This is an interdisciplinary programme at the University of Maastricht providing chances for motivated students to broaden their horizons by participating in scientific research projects. Students of Medicine, Biomedical Sciences and Health Sciences, work together with the aim of combining knowledge and experience from different disciplines.

Prof. Dr. Bert Smeets provided us with the subject of muscle regeneration in dystrophic diseases using stem cells. He was already in contact with Stichting Voor Sara and mentioned the subject of LAMA2-CMD, a very rare muscular dystrophy. Both the prognosis and treatment for this disease are still unknown. Therefore, we decided that we should join Stichting Voor Sara with the goal to organise a conference that enables scientists and patients to gather and provide room to share ideas and opinions. Eventually, this will create an atmosphere to stimulate international collaboration in finding an effective treatment against LAMA2-CMD.

In addition to our work in organising this conference, our team is also doing original research in cooperation with the Clinical Genomics department on improving the efficiency of muscle stem-cell based therapy funded by Maastricht University.

We are looking forward to meet you at the conference,

the GYM honours team

Adnan Abdulaziz Said
Christos Diamantidis
Eric Dragendorf
Lotte van de Loo
Leonardo Zingler Herrero
Marie-Julie Lemmens
Pierre Springuel
Teun van Zutphen