On March 20, Maurice Swinkels successfully defended his dissertation: 'Zooming in on Platelets in Hemostatic Disorders'.
In the first part of his dissertation, Dr Swinkels focuses on immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), a condition in which patients have reduced platelet counts for various reasons, which can manifest themselves in an increased risk of bleeding.
Because vaccination can be a trigger for ITP in some patients, one of the studies focused on whether vaccination with COVID vaccines during the recent COVID-19 pandemic affected platelet counts in ITP patients.
For the second part of his dissertation, Dr Swinkels, in collaboration with colleagues from the Optical Imaging Center of the Erasmus MC, developed a new super-resolution microscopy method based on Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM) to study the alpha-granula in blood platelets. .
This made him the first to be able to quantitatively map the storage and secretion of the blood clotting protein Von Willebrand factor in platelets of patients with Von Willebrand disease.
One of these studies was rewarded in 2022 with the RPTH Editor's Award for best basic research publication in the journal Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis (RPTH).
You can download the dissertation below.
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