Tessa Dieckman

Research

With an interest in autoimmune diseases, celiac disease (CeD) specifically got my attention during my masters internship. A complication of celiac disease is refractory celiac disease type II (RCDII), which is the main topic of study during my PhD trajectory. RCDII patients show clonal expansion of an aberrant cell population in their small intestine, which is considered to be a precursor state for a specific small intestinal lymphoma. For both complications of CeD, no standardized treatment options are available. Being part of the research group of Frits Koning, I perform single-cell studies using mass cytometry and single-cell RNA sequencing on material from RCDII patients. Herewith, we hope to get more insight in its unraveled pathology. Additionally, I perform a phase II clinical trial for RCDII patients with a JAK-STAT inhibitor, namely tofacitinib. Researchers in our group previously identified this medicine as a good candidate to diminish the aberrant cell population in the small intestine of RCDII patients. We hope to show efficacy of tofacitinib treatment in this rare patient population. 

Curriculum Vitae

I obtained my bachelor degree in Biomedical Sciences at VU University in Amsterdam. In this study, my interest went out to autoimmune diseases in particular. After my bachelor, I pursued my long-term goal of becoming a medical doctor and participated in the ZIGMA program at VU Medical Center in Amsterdam. During my masters in Medicine, I did a research internship at the department of Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology at VUmc, in the group of Georg Kraal. Here, I studied the genetics of celiac disease. After I finished my masters, I started my PhD trajectory in a joint collaboration between the Immunology department of LUMC under supervision of Frits Koning and the Gastroenterology department of Amsterdam UMC, location VU Medical Center under supervision of Gerd Bouma.