Mannucci award for Judith Cosemans
22 aug 2011
Mannucci award for Judith Cosemans
Dr. Judith Cosemans was given a Mannucci award for her paper “Potentiating role of Gas6 and Tyro3, Axl and Mer (TAM) receptors in human and murine platelet activation and thrombus stabilization.”
The Pier Mannucci prize is awarded in honour of Pier M. Mannucci, the first Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Thrombosis and Hemostasis, for the best articles by Young Investigators under 35 years.
In the paper, using several approaches including flow chamber technology Dr. Cosemans has shown that plasma Gas6, by signaling via the three TAM receptors on the platelet surface, enhances thrombus stabilization. Herein, the Gas6-TAM activation pathway synergizes with ADP-P2Y12 activation by signaling via hosphoinositide 3-kinase and Akt.
In January 2009, Dr. Cosemans finished her PhD thesis entitles “Dynamic regulation of thrombus stability. Focus on platelet receptors and downstream signaling” under the supervision of Prof. Johan Heemskerk and Prof. Jan Rosing in the Department of Biochemistry, at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM), The Netherlands. After her PhD study, she executed a postdoc project in the same laboratory to develop flow chamber technology for measuring thrombus formation as a compatible alternative technique for in vivo experiments. Part of this work was done in collaboration with several laboratories around the world. Her current goal is to investigate the role of platelets in processes beyond hemostasis. For this research she recently obtained a Dr. E. Dekker grant from the Netherlands Heart Foundation, enabling study of the roles of platelet-derived matrix metalloproteinases on vascular remodeling.