Our Team
Sabine Costagliola
Sabine Costagliola completed a PhD in immunology at the Université Aix Marseille II (France) in 1991 and a PhD in Biomedical Science at ULB in 2000. She obtained a permanent position at FNRS as Research Associate in 2000. She is group leader and director of IRIBHM (Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Biologie Humaine et Moleculaire).
Mírian Romitti
Mírian Romitti completed her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences with a focus on Endocrinology in 2014 at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She obtained an Associate Professor position at ULB in 2024. She is a young group leader at IRIBHM-Jacques E. Dumont and her lab focuses on dissecting mechanisms involved in thyroid and lung development and diseases using human organoids as model.
Technicians
Véronique Janssens
Lab Manager
phone # +32(0)2 555 4197
Véronique studied at the “Athénée des Pagodes” obtained her CESS (option Latin – math) in 1994. She followed the first year of pharmacology at the “Université Libre de Bruxelles” (ULB). From 1995 to 1998, she performed a graduate in Medical Biology in “Institut Paul Lambin” (UCL) (assay: “Huntington chorea”) and obtained her diploma as technician of laboratories. In 1998, she started to work in Sabine Costagliola lab as lab technician and she obtained a permanent position at ULB in 2003. In 2013, she obtained a career advancement at ULB after a competitive examination and an essay entitled : “Zebrafish: a new biomedical research tool at ULB?”. Véronique is our lab manager.
Laura Nebreda
Laura Nebreda obtained her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Institut Paul Lambin in Brussels. During her master’s thesis at the Ludwig Institute, she discovered a deep passion for biotechnology and molecular biology. After graduating, she began her career at IRIBHM, contributing to various molecular biology and transgenesis projects. Since September 2024, she has embarked on a new scientific journey, working on an exciting project involving lung organoids derived from embryonic stem cells, under the supervision of Mirian Romitti.
Jessica D’Amico
Jessica completed her graduate studies in Medical Biology at the « Institut Paul Lambin » (UCL) in Brussels and obtained her diploma as a laboratory technician. After working for 10 years in a medical analysis laboratory, she joined Sabine Costagliola’s lab in September 2024 as a lab technician, where she focuses on modeling congenital thyroid diseases using induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC).
Postdoctoral Fellows
Eduardo Rios
Eduardo Rios is a postdoctoral fellow in Costagliola’s lab. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry from Andrés Bello University in Chile. He then moved to Brazil to pursue his PhD in ‘ Morphological Sciences: Developmental Biology’ at the Institute of Biomedicine of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). During all these years, Eduardo worked with zebrafish as a model to understand the mechanisms by which cell adhesion controls some aspects of gastrulation and cell behaviour during development.After his PhD, Eduardo went to CRBM/CNRS in Montpellier – France to complete his first postdoc. There he deepened the mechanisms of cell adhesion in cancer aggressiveness using in vivo and in vitro models. He then returned to Brazil, where he obtained a position as visiting professor at the UFRJ Faculty of Medicine. There he worked as a researcher studying the effects of exposure to different endocrine disrupting chemicals on thyroid physiology using different in vivo models.Eduardo started in Costagliola’s lab in March of 2023 working in thyroid cancer using thyroid organoids models.
Matthieu Duot
Matthieu Duot started his post-doc at the Costagliola Lab in October 2024. He obtained his Master’s degree in Health Biology at the University of Nantes, where he specialised in genetics and genomics and conducted a translational study on the rare genetic disease POIKTMP. During his PhD, Matthieu focused on genetic post-transcriptional regulation during eye lens development and conducted research at the University of Rennes in France and the University of Delaware in the United States. He is now collaborating with Costagliola’s team to generate thyroid organoids to study a rare genetic disorder, which is thyroid-stimulating hormone resistance syndrome, caused by a mutation in a non-coding STR sequence
Valentine Suteau
Valentine Suteau is a postdoctoral fellow in Costagliola’s lab. She is an Assistant Professor and Hospital Practitioner (MCU-PH) in Endocrinology in Angers, France. She obtained her MD in Endocrinology and PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Angers. Her research focuses on thyroid diseases, particularly thyroid cancer, combining translational research with clinical endocrinology. During her PhD, she investigated G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) as novel therapeutic targets in refractory thyroid cancer. She joined the Costagliola lab in 2026 to develop human thyroid cancer organoid models carrying NRASQ61R mutation, to investigate the mechanisms of thyroid cancer progression and identify new therapeutic strategies.
PhD Students
Daniela Aparicio
Daniela Aparicio graduated from a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala in Guatemala City. After that she moved to Leuven, Belgium and completed a master’s degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the KU Leuven in 2021. Passionate about molecular developmental biology, she studied octopus neurodevelopment for her master thesis. Later, interested in biomedical research with a less confidential experimental model, she joined the Costagliola lab in 2022 as a PhD student. Her project is focused on modeling congenital thyroid diseases with human thyroid organoids.
Meghna Shankar
Meghna graduated from the University College Dublin, Ireland in 2018. The title of her MSc thesis was « Characterisation of an autosomal recessive blind zebrafish model, with a putative mutation in the gene encoding abca4b (photoreceptor cell–specific ATP-binding cassette transporter) ». She has previously worked in Bangalore, India, in genetic testing and NGS based diagnostic laboratories at the Centre for Human Genetics and Medgenome Labs Private limited as a Research Associate. Meghna has an undergraduate degree Bachelor of engineering in Biotechnology from PES University Bangalore, India. She joined the Costagliola laboratory in 2018 for a PhD to work on a zebrafish model to study thyroid cell specification within the foregut endoderm.
Alessandra Boggian
Alessandra obtained a bachelor’s in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Ferrara (2019). Subsequently, she graduated in a master’s in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Amsterdam (2021). She conducted her research projects at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC) and the Swammerdam Institute for Life Science (SILS). She became interested in regenerative medicine and developmental biology during her project in cardiac regeneration and engineered tissue production and modeling. She started her PhD project in November 2022 in under the supervision of Mirian Romitti. In her project, she studies the role of insulin in the development of lung organoids derived from embryonic stem cells.
Laura Chomette graduated from medical school at ULB in 2015 and specialized in Cardiology in 2018. She is currently a PhD student at the IRIBHM and Erasme Hospital, supervised by Pr Antoine Bondue and funded by the Fonds Erasme. The title of her PhD is Heritable Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: molecular insights through genetics and induced pluripotent stem cells.
Laura Chomette
Ivan verla Tientcheu Ngaffi
Ivan earned his Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Biology in 2020 and his Master’s in 2022 from the Université des Montagnes in Cameroon. Driven by his passion for biomedical research, he pursued a second Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences with a research focus at the Université libre de Bruxelles, graduating in 2024. His thesis centered on developing a human thyroid cancer organoid model using human embryonic cancer stem cells carrying the BRAFV600E mutation. To continue this research, Ivan joined the COSTAGLIOLA lab as a PhD student in 2024.
Bria Jackson
bria.mekell.jackson225@ulb.be
Bria Jackson obtained her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Sciences at Maastricht University in 2023. She completed the Gene, Cell, Development master program at L'Université Paris-Saclay in June 2025. During her masters she worked on the development of thyroid and lung organoids in our lab. Currently as PhD student in Mirian Romitti’s team, she is focusing on the generation of novel organoid systems to model human thyroid congenital diseases.
Margarida Pedro
margarida.pedro.009@gmail.com
Margarida Pedro obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology from the Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon, Portugal (2021). Later, she graduated from a Master’s degree in Biochemistry for Health from NOVA Medical School, Lisbon, Portugal (2023), where she specialized in cellular redox regulation and disease mechanisms, particularly focusing on NRF2 signaling in retinal and neurodegenerative contexts. As Research Assistant at the Molecular Mechanisms of Disease Lab in NOVA Medical School she worked on autophagy and antioxidant pathways as potential therapeutic targets in macular degeneration. She started her PhD in November 2025 under the supervision of Mírian Romitti and her project aims to dissect molecular mechanisms governing thyroid and lung specification using human organoids.
Mayara Lago
lagomayara99@gmail.com
Nutritionist graduated from the Universidade Nove de Julho (2021) and specialized in Oncology at the School of Continuing Education of HCFMUSP (2023). She is currently a PhD student in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) where she studies molecular mechanisms involved in Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma by using Crispr/Cas9 technique. She is currently in PhD exchange in Mírian Romitti’s lab, focusing on pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models to study thyroid C cell development.
Master’s Students
Yukta Baskar
Yukta Baskar obtained her Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology at Kumaraguru College of Technology in India (2025) and is currently pursuing a Master's in Molecular Biology through the Interuniversity Programme at VUB, KU Leuven and UAntwerpen. During her Bachelor's, she completed a research internship at the L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, where she worked on base editing of the PAX6 gene in iPSCs and gained training in generating foxe3 knockout zebrafish. As a Mitacs Globalink intern, she also studied how sensory nerves influence skin cell migration during wound healing at the University of Guelph in Canada. Her Bachelor's thesis was an omics-based study of fibroblast signaling in wound healing and fibrosis. Driven by an interest in regenerative medicine and generating organoid models, she joined the TLOR lab for her Master's thesis to assess the role of vasculature on thyroid maturation.
Lucas Salé
Lucas is currently pursuing an Engineering degree in Biological Engineering at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne (UTC), France. He joined the COSTAGLIOLA lab as an Assistant Engineer in August 2026 for a six-month research internship. His work focuses on in vitro models of thyroid cancer using human organoids carrying the TP53 knockout and BRAFV600E mutation. Working alongside Ivan, he contributes to the extension and characterization of these models, further developing the work initiated on the TP53KO + BRAFV600E condition.
Korra Mint Cheine
Korra Mint Cheine obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and is currently completing a Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). In 2025, she completed an internship at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Innovation in Healthcare (I³H, ULB), contributing to a project on the clinical development of Odiparcil for mucopolysaccharidosis type VI (MPS VI). In 2026, she joined Prof. Sabine Costagliola’s team at ULB, where she worked on human iPSC-derived thyroid organoids. She is currently pursuing her Master’s thesis in the same laboratory, developing a double-reporter human iPSC line to support thyroid organoid generation and the study of thyroid differentiation.
Alumnis
Alvaro Beatriz
Antonica Francesco
Ascenzo Sabrina
Barbée Cindy
Bonomi Marco
Ceolin Lucieli
Coppens Sandra
Cornelis Sabine
Dadhich Rajesh
De Faria Da Fonseca Barbara
De Leener Anne
Dmitriev Petr
Dupuis Eleonore
Figini Dominika
Gillotay Pierre
Haerlingen Benoit
Ho Su Chin
Kizys Marina
Loy Tiffany
Maquet Emilie
Meeus Laurent
Molinaro Angelo
Monestier Olivier
Montanelli Lucia
Opitz Robert
Schiavo Andrea Alex
Smits Guillaume
Trubiroha Achim
Urizar Eneko
Vandernoot Isabelle
Zoenen Maxime
Iléane Bauguil
Iléane Bauguil obtained her Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Sciences at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and is currently completing a Master's degree in the same field. During her studies, she completed several research internships. In Sabine Costagliola’s laboratory, she worked on the optimization of a directed differentiation protocol of human iPSCs into thyroid cells. She then joined Marie-Isabelle Garcia’s laboratory, where she investigated the role of the olfactory receptor Olfr558 in serotonin production and secretion by enterochromaffin cells of the colon. She also completed a bioinformatics internship in Valérie Wittamer’s laboratory, where she analyzed single-nucleus transcriptomic datasets from human Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease brain tissues, with a particular focus on the role of microglia in neurodegeneration. She is currently conducting her Master's thesis in Sabine Costagliola’s laboratory, studying the role of GLIS3 in congenital hypothyroidism using human stem cell-derived thyroid organoids.
Laurène de Le Hoye
Laurène de Le Hoye graduated from medical school in 2020 and specialized in Internal Medicine in 2025, with an additional competency in Endocrinology obtained in 2026. She is currently a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Sabine Costagliola. The title of her PhD is Deciphering Pathogenic Mechanisms of Thyroid Dysgenesis through Patient-Derived iPSC Organoids.
Arina Nikolaeva
Arina obtained a medical degree from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She started an Internal Medicine residency at the same university in 2024. She became a PhD student at the IRIBHM under the supervision of Prof. Costagliola and Prof. Romitti in 2026. Her project focuses on the influence of endocrine disruptors on thyroid organoid formation.