Bieke Broux

Bieke Broux is Associate Professor of Immunology and group leader at Hasselt University (UH), Belgium. Her group studies how immune cells interact with the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in neurodegenerative disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and how this is impacted by lifestyle and diet. Her long-term aim is to find solutions that halt disease without causing side effects, while providing the appropriate micro-environment that enables tissue repair.

Bieke obtained her PhD at UH in 2013, providing the first evidence for a pathogenic role of cytotoxic CD4 T cells in MS: these cells migrate along a fractalkine gradient and are present in brain lesions of MS patients (J Autoimmun, 2012). As a postdoctoral fellow under Prof. Alexandre Prat at the University of Montréal, Canada, she identified the Th17-derived cytokine IL-26 as an unexpected BBB-protective factor (Neurol Neuroimmunol Neuroinflamm, 2020). Supported by an ECTRIMS postdoctoral fellowship and grants from the Charcot Foundation, FWO, and the MS support fund, she returned to UH to establish a new BBB research line. In 2020, she received the Global MS Research Booster Award from the Dutch Stichting MS Research, given biennially to support the transition from postdoctoral fellow to independent group leader.

Since her appointment at UH in September 2021, she has published papers in leading journals including Acta Neuropathologica, JCI Insight, PNAS, and Advanced Science. She has collaborated with biotech partners eTheRNA (funded by VLAIO) and argenx to develop mRNA- and antibody-based therapies for MS, building towards her long-term vision.