Menno completed his PhD in 2010 in the department of Oral Biochemistry at the VU University in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. After obtaining his PhD, he moved to Vancouver to join Dr. Colby Zaph’s lab at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Here, he studied how non-histone protein methylation is intertwined with conventional signalling pathways, such as Hippo and WNT, to control intestinal regeneration and tumorigenesis. During his postdoc, Menno was successful in several fellowship applications including a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2016, Menno started his own group and became a Group Leader at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. In Norway, Menno and his team discovered new regulators of early-life intestinal epithelial development, and further focused on how intestinal epithelium is communicating with other cell types to mediate protection from damage, inflammation, and infections. This work was supported by funds from The Research Council of Norway as well as the Norwegian Cancer Society. Menno’s current interests include how intestinal epithelium matures early in life, and how that occurs in concert with immune cells such as Innate Lymphoid Cells, the microbiota, and the switch from milk to solids. In addition, he is interested in how intestinal epithelium helps defending against pathogens and how resolvement of inflammation occurs once a pathogen is cleared. His research combines in vitro organoid cultures for mechanistic insight with murine models of disease, and relies heavily on various imaging techniques and transcriptomic analyses.
