Noortje is conducting her post-doctoral research at the Copenhagen Center for Glycomics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Here, she aims to identify tissue glycans that are involved in disease initiation and progression. Previously, she worked as postdoc at the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics at the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands, where she received her PhD in 2019 on the development and application of mass spectrometry-based methods for the analysis of (antibody) glycosylation. Noortje’s enthusiasm for glycoproteomic-related research started early in her scientific career and this remains a key drive in her current work. She is interested in the development of mass spectrometric methods and data analysis protocols for addressing clinical research questions.

Glycans decorate most proteins and cover all our cell membranes, yet our understanding of how glycans influence the lives of cells and organisms is limited.

In Wandall Group we use gene editing, organotypic tissue models, and sophisticated mass spectrometry to decipher glycan functions. The genetically engineered cells and organotypic tissue model have provided evidence of the importance of glycans in tissue differentiation, cancer, and host-pathogen interactions.

We now use organotypic tissue models for broad discovery and dissection of the specific structure-function relationships by which glycans drive normal epithelial formation, transformation and interaction with viruses and the microbiome.

We aim to exploit this knowledge for new and targeted treatments for inflammation, cancer, tissue regeneration, and the development of novel viral vaccine strategies.