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Claudia Spits

Claudia Spits

  • Pleinlaan 2

    1050 Brussels

    Belgium

  • Laarbeeklaan 103

    1090 Jette

    Belgium

  • Laarbeeklaan 103

    1090 Brussels

    Belgium

20052026

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Expertise

C. Spits studied Biology at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. After obtaining an Advanced Master’s degree in genetics and cell biology in 2002, she moved to Brussels to pursue a PhD at Vrije Universiteit Brussel under the supervision of Prof. Liebaers. In December 2006, she defended her thesis “(R)evolution in preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Development and clinical application of different approaches to preimplantation genetic diagnosis for monogenic disorders", for which she received the Ignace Vanderscheuren Award for the best PhD dissertation in Biomedical Sciences at VUB for the period 2006‐2012. From 2007 until 2014, C. Spits was a postdoctoral fellow supported by the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen at the Research Group Reproduction and Genetics, VUB. From December 2008 until February 2009, she was an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Colombo (Sri Lanka). 

Since February 2022, C. Spits is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of the VUB, where she teaches stem cell biology. She is the principal investigator of a growing team focusing on genomic regulators of cell fate, specializing in early human development and pluripotent stem cells. She has been granted €5.4 million for research projects as supervisor and principal investigator (e.g., Methusalem, FWO), 21 Master and 11 PhD students have completed their dissertations under her supervision, and her team currently counts 1 postdoctoral researcher and 4 PhD students in different stages of their doctoral training. She has 72 peer-reviewed publications, of which 26 as last author, including 4 publications in Nature Biotechnology, 1 in Nature Protocols and 2 in Nature Communications. 

In addition to publishing, C. Spits is strongly involved in sharing scientific knowledge through meetings and societies, and in contributing to the process of peer-review of both papers and grant applications. She is a reviewer for numerous journals and associate editor for three (Human Reproduction 2012-2015, Cells from 2019-2021, Molecular Human Reproduction 2024-2026) and has been asked as expert reviewer by several granting agencies, both national and international (e.g., ZonW -Netherlands, MRC - UK). From 2011 until 2019, she was very active within the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), where she coordinated the special interest group Reproduction and Genetics, and contributed to several opinion and policy papers. This has strengthened her visibility in her community of peers and has greatly facilitated networking with scientists and practitioners in the domain of developmental biology and reproductive medicine. It is also through this network that she engaged as supervisor in two joint PhDs, with Josep Santalo (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain) and Luca Gianaroli (University of Teramo, Italy). C. Spits is the founder and current president of the Belgian Society for Stem Cell Research, which had its first meeting in 2014. She been continuously involved in the steering of the society, and has organized its 2023, 2024 and 2025 meetings in Brussels. She has been the Belgian national representative for the human pluripotent stem cell registry since 2020 and a board member of the International Stem Cell Initiative.  

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