Biochemical Journal Young Investigator Award winner

Laurens van Meeteren

Laurens van Meeteren (1977) received his Master’s degree in 2001 in Biology at the University of Utrecht and is now a PhD student in the group of Wouter Moolenaar at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. His research focuses on the lipid growth factor lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), in particular how LPA is produced by secreted phospholipases D (PLDs) and the in vivo importance of these enzymes. He found that certain exogenous PLDs can produce bioactive LPA from circulating lysophosphatidylcholine, which may account for at least some of the known pathogenic effects of these PLDs. His current research concerns autotaxin (ATX), an LPA-producing secreted PLD, that was originally isolated as a tumour motility factor. Using a novel fluorescence-based approach, he has shown that ATX is inhibited not only by its product LPA but also by the lipid mediator sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P), thus revealing a novel role for S1P as a repressor of LPA production. To define the physiolocal role of ATX he set out to create conditional ATX knockout mice and discovered that ATX is essential for normal development (collaboration with molecular geneticist Jos Jonkers). His future research will focus on how ATX deficiency affects tumour progression.