Pepijn Saraber (Dept of Biomedical Engineering) has received the Aneurysm-NL Young Talent Research Grant for the project ‘VSMC Biology in Aortic Aneurysm Disease: Embryological Diversity as a Determinant of Dissection and Rupture Risk’ to facilitate collaboration between the aneurysm community in the Netherlands, the University of Cambridge and King's College London.

The aim of this project is to gain advanced expertise in differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into smooth muscle cells of distinct embryological origins through a research visit to the University of Cambridge. This knowledge will then be transferred to the Netherlands to strengthen aneurysm research by enabling the development of more biologically relevant disease models and advancing understanding of how embryological variation contributes to aneurysm pathology.