Blanche Schroen

Professor

Between 2002 and 2006, Blanche Schroen completed her PhD at Maastricht University’s CARIM School for Cardiovascular Diseases, Department of Cardiology with Professors Yigal Pinto, Harry Crijns and Stephane Heymans. The research focused on uncovering molecular and genetic factors that increase heart failure risk using ‘omics techniques. She then continued as a postdoctoral fellow in cardiac genomics at Imperial College London in the lab of Professors Timothy Aitman and Stuart Cook, supported by an NWO Rubicon grant.

In 2008, she returned to Maastricht University to study non-coding RNAs as risk factors for heart failure. Several personal grants, including NWO Veni and Vidi and NHS Dekker awards, enabled her to expand her research into cardiac genomics and the underlying mechanisms of heart failure. Her group’s work on cardiac inflammatory microRNAs helped show that immune activation plays an early role in heart failure and may be a promising therapeutic target.

Her main expertise includes the genetics and molecular biology of non-coding RNAs related to heart failure, with a focus on fibrosis, cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and metabolism, inflammation and immune cell roles, and vascular and platelet functions.

Schroen’s group is now based in the Department of Physiology at CARIM. In addition to leading her research group, she chairs the faculty’s Science Committee, holds several educational coordinator roles, and actively collaborates through consortium grants that support team science.