Sare Verstockt, PhD

Post-doctoral researcher

Sare Verstockt completed her Master in Biomedical Sciences at KU Leuven in 2015. She opted for the Minor Research, Communication and Management, to learn about the broader picture of scientific research including healthcare economics, marketing and management. Further sparked by her interest in translational research, she pursued a PhD at the Department of Human Genetics, and continued her research in the Leuven IBD group as a postdoctoral researcher, supported by a fellowship from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

As a biomedical translational scientist, her research focuses on understanding the molecular drivers of IBD onset and progression, and translating these insights into clinical applications. Integrating longitudinal cohorts, multi-omics and experimental models, she studies creeping fat and postoperative recurrence in Crohn’s disease. Her work recently led to the high-impact identification of GPX4 as a druggable biomarker for postoperative recurrence. She also coordinates PANTHER, a Belgian multicentre inception cohort with a prognostic biobank of newly diagnosed IBD patients, and developed a targeted IBD genotyping assay. Ultimately, she aims to advance precision medicine approaches that improve outcomes for patients with IBD.

Her work has received national and international recognition, including from the Flemish IBD patient association (CCV), the Belgian IBD Research and Development (BIRD) group, the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO), and the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA).