Rick van Leeuwen

Rick van Leeuwen
Senior-Technician/Laboratory Manager Department of Cardiology at Maastricht.
More than 20 years of expertise as senior technician in different research labs at different locations in NL. (12 years at Cardiology-UM)

Current work:

Important general aspect is to manage all the Cardiology research laboratory facilities, control the financial status of the bench fee of the research projects and update lab permits for internal and external audits.

My research aspect is more in the protein field, like unraveling protein-protein interactions in viral myocarditis with techniques like pull down assays and co-immunoprecipitation or to identify new protein targets by mass spectrometry.
In order to understand the mechanism I study in vitro, signal transduction pathways in isolated neonatal cardiomyocytes and fibroblasts by Western Blotting. Therefore I use also other primary cells (macrophages) and cell lines.
For micro-RNA research I use Northern Blot techniques and to study mRNA targets or unknown microRNA I perform RNA-immunoprecipitation (RIP) assays with Argonaute-2.  For establishing the targets I use next gen RNA sequencing tools.
Further I am introducing novel techniques/technologies to optimize our research scoops and to improve routine lab techniques with recent high tech compounds.

For education purposes I support the graduate students in their research and perform practical courses Molecular Biology and Genetics for Science College in Chemelot DSM.