Guy E. E. Boeckxstaens

In 1987, following my medical studies, I embarked on a PhD program in Neurogastroenterology during which we discovered that nitric oxide (NO) was the main neurotransmitter of the inhibitory NANC innervation in the gut. This discovery was published in Nature in 1990 (>950 citations). In 1994, I finished my clinical training in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology and was invited to join the clinical staff of the division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology in the Academic Medical Center (AMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands), a world-leading center in the field of Gastroenterology. I was attracted to set up a Neuro-gastroenterology Unit encompassing both clinical care and basic and clinical research in this area. To gain more skills and knowledge in this area, I had an additional six months training in 1995 in the world-leading center located in Adelaide, Australia. On my return, I started a clinical diagnostic unit equipped with state-of-the-art recording systems and I organized outpatient clinical care. Within a few years, my unit became a referral center within the Netherlands for patients with motility disorders. In parallel, I continued my basic research and shifted my focus towards neuro-immune interaction and the impact of inflammation on gut function. We discovered that the vagus nerve modulates the intestinal immune system, a finding published in Nature Immunology in 2005. To date, my basic research in the field of neuro-immune interaction and neurogastroenterology is internationally recognized as pioneering. To date, I have been promotor or co-promotor of 41 PhDs. When I left the AMC in 2007, my group consisted of more than 20 scientists and is still internationally recognized as one of the leading groups in our field. In 2007, I obtained an Odysseus grant and returned to Belgium. I was appointed as a full professor in Medicine at KU Leuven and the division of Gastroenterology at the University Hospital Leuven. I started a new research group focusing on neuro-immune interaction within the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and was awarded with an ERC Advanced Grant in 2013 (CHOLSTIM) and in 2019 (NEUMACS). My group currently consists of 4 postdocs, 9 PhD students, 1 trial nurse and 2 lab technicians.