Units

Institute of Interdisciplinary Research in human and molecular Biology

IRIBHM is part of the Medical School of the Univerité Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and one of the largest research structures of the university.
Founded in the nineteen sixties with the aim of applying an interdisciplinary approach to the study of thyroid pathophysiology, the Institute has thrived over the years into a number of independent groups with diversifying research interests. Presently, about 130 researchers and technicians are working in the Institute over a range of subjects encompassing signal transduction, development, neuroscience, and cancer, using cell and molecular biology approaches. Staff researchers include physicians, physicists, bioinformaticians, (bio)chemists and biologists. The activities of IRIBHM are mainly taking place on the Erasme campus of ULB, in the suburb of Brussels, although the Institute also contributes to the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Médicale (IBMM) on the Gosselies campus. The heavy equipment is common to the whole Institute and often shared with other groups of the campus as technical platforms. This includes genomics, proteomics, transgenesis, FACS and confocal microscopy facilities.

Projetcs

Thyroidology

Current research programs include the study of : the mechanisms of H2O2 production in thyrocytes, the regulation cAMP and inositolphosphate regulatory cascades by the TSH receptor, structure-function relationships of the TSH receptor, mechanisms of activation of the TSH receptor by the autoantibodies of Graves'disease, control of the proliferation of thyrocytes by cAMP- and growth factor-dependent mechanisms, the regulation of gene expression in thyrocytes by cAMP, the mechanisms responsible for the development of congenital hypothyroidism.