After suffering of chronic kidney failure for 19 years, I received a kidney transplant in 1995. Six months after surgery I started transplant sports activities, and ever since that I participated in every World Transplant Game (11 Summer Games and 8 Winter Games) as well as every European Games and Championships until now. Feeling the wonderful benefits of sport after transplantation, I have committed myself to transplant sport both on national and international level, not just as a competing athlete but also by working in NGOs.
I am the president of the European Transplant and Dialysis Sports Federation (ETDSF) and the Hungarian Transplant Federation. ETDSF coordinates the organisation of the European Transplant and Dialysis Sports Championships which are being organised biennially since 2000 with an increasing number of participants.
In the Hungarian Transplant Federation we operate programs for 11 different sports not only for transplant recipients but also for dialysed patients. We also offer a patient education program called BEEP (Be Educated and Empowered Patient).
Nicolette (Lettie) Bishop is Reader in Exercise Immunology in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University, based in the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine-East Midlands.
Lettie’s research interests lie in the impacts of exercise on immunity, inflammation and infection in athletes, the general population and those with long-term conditions associated with chronic inflammation.
Lettie works closely with clinical colleagues and Physiologists from the English Institute of Sport and her current projects include a 3 year translational project grant from Heart Research UK to investigate the feasibility and acceptability of different exercise programmes designed to reduce chronic inflammation in kidney transplant recipients. Lettie has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, editorials, book chapters and review articles in the area of exercise immunology, including as a co-author on the Feb 2017 International Society of Exercise and Immunology Consensus Statement on Immunonutrition and Exercise.
Jan Boeckx is CEO of the sheltered workplace Amival in Turnhout, Belgium. He has a degree of industrial engineer in chemistry. After his education he worked for 3 years in a chemical plant in Antwerp. Following his roots, he made in 1989 the transition to Amival. Amival focuses on persons with a disability and provides them with work so people can maintain in society and develop employment in a normal business. Under his leadership, Amival evolved into a fully-fledged, professional company with more than 500 employees. Amival carries out healthcare-activities in cleanrooms and assembles medical devices and unidose-packaging of medicines.
Jan Boeckx is married and the father of 3 children . Sofie, the youngest, received in 2000 a kidney from him.
I’m currently working on the respiratory rehabilitation unit and the rehabilitation of obese patients before and after bariatric surgery. I also have experience working on the cardiac rehabilitation unit of UZ Leuven.
Dr. Eva Corpeleijn (1976) is associate professor Lifestyle Epidemiology at the Department of Epidemiology, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, and head of the unit ‘Lifestyle Medicine in Obesity and Diabetes’.
Quantifying the health impact of lifestyle is an important aspect of her scientific research. As more people get older and develop a chronic condition, she is particularly interested how a healthy lifestyle can support healthy ageing in people with chronic disease, and prevent obesity, diabetes type 2 and cardio-metabolic complications as comorbidities. To advance lifestyle support, she is interested in the mechanisms as to how and why lifestyle affects health. As a lifestyle researcher, she has a longstanding experience in lifestyle interventions to prevent obesity and diabetes, in renal patients as well as in other clinical populations (prediabetes, severe mental illness).
She is secretary of the Dutch Association for the Study of Obesity, member of the Health Council for Nutritional Guidelines for Pregnant Women and former chair of the Dutch Nutrition Science Days.
Previously, she trained in the department of pediatric hepatology at King’s College Hospital London (2003-2005) and the department of pediatric gastroenterology at Sophia Children’s Hospital Rotterdam (2005-2006).
Within her team, Dr R De Bruyne is responsible for the subspeciality of pediatric hepatology. She coordinates the medical care for pediatric liver transplant patients in the pre- and post transplant phase. Her main research interests are the prevention of late side effects and optimisation of long-term quality of life after liver transplantation and immunological consequences in children after liver transplantation. Funded by the FWO, she performed translational research in the latter subject from 2010-2015, resulting in her PhD thesis “Immunological consequences of liver transplantation in children: making or breaking tolerance.” She is the coordinator of the Belgian Working Group of Pediatric Hepatology (BESPGHAN) and a participating member in the European Reference Network “Rare-liver” (Ghent University being a certified Health Care Provider within this network).
Sabina De Geest is a Professor of Nursing and Director of the Institute of Nursing Science and Chair of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Basel (Switzerland). She also has a part-time professorship at KU Leuven.
Sabina De Geest leads the Leuven Basel Research Group, an international, interdisciplinary research group focusing on behavioural and psychosocial issues in solid organ & stem cell transplantation. She is co-investigator in the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study, a nation wide cohort study in Switzerland and leads the psychosocial and behavioural data collection of the STCS. Implementation science is the main methodological approach used in her research programs to make research findings more powerful for clinical practice
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He currently works as an abdominal transplant surgeon at the University Hospitals Leuven, and is associate professor at the Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. His current research and scientific interest focuses on liver transplantation from donation after circulatory death donors, machine perfusion preservation, modulation of ischemia/reperfusion injury, peritoneal dialysis access and physical exercise after transplantation.
He is a Senior Clinical researcher granted by the Research foundation Flanders (FWO) since 2015. He is president of the Belgian Organ Procurement Committee (BeOPC), He is a regular faculty member at the Hesperis course organized by ESOT and the European Peritoneal Dialysis University within ISPD. He is the founder and president of Transplantoux, a foundation that raises awareness regarding organ donation, and that motivates transplant recipients to sport and live a healthy life.
Harlinde Peperstraete (°1980) obtained her medical degree in 2005 at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She became anesthesiologist at the same University in 2010. In 2011 she obtained at the Descartes University in Paris (France) the certification in intensive care for children with a congenital heart disease and at the Ghent University the certification in intensive care medicine. She performed a fellowship at The Sick Children Hospital Necker in Paris (2010-2011).
Currently she works as a Staff member at the Intensive Care Unit of the Ghent University Hospital. She is a PhD candidate at the Ghent University. Her research is about extra corporeal life support, clotting and simulation.
She is lecturer at the Ghent University in medical equipment and clinical reasoning.
Transplanted in 2009.
Member Transplantoux since 2012.
Dr Sakkas is a Professor in Health Sciences and an active clinical interdisciplinary researcher specialized in non-pharmacological interventions for improving chronic diseases patients' quality of life and improving overall health status. His research combines physiological and psychological approaches for tackling modern medicines’ issues.
He worked for 11 years in Greece and since 2016 in the UK while now he has a dual appointment and spends time between Greece and UK.
Mariann Ulvestad graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Kiel (Germany), and is currently a PhD-candidate at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on cardiorespiratory fitness and physical activity after lung transplantation. She is the principal investigator in a randomized controlled trial called “High-Intensity Training after Lung Transplantation” carried out at Oslo University Hospital in cooperation with Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. Her main research interests are exercise medicine, and respiratory physiology.
Yves Van Belleghem (°1960) obtained the M.D. and Ph.D degrees at Ghent University, Gent Belgium. He received his board certification in Surgery in 1991. He became (2001) fellow of the European Board of Cardiothoracic Surgery (EBCTS).
He is a staff member at the department of Cardiac Surgery at the Ghent University Hospital, Gent, Belgium performing adult cardiac surgery and is involved in cardiac transplantation and the treatment of cardiac failure by the use of assistdevices and the rehabilitation of these patients. He is professor at the Faculty of Medecin and Health Sciences at the Ghent University, Gent, Belgium.
Kristof Vandekerckhove (°Zele, Belgium, 1973) works as a pediatric cardiologist at the Princess Elisabeth Children’s Hospital Ghent since 2007.
He became pediatrician in 2003, specialist in intensive care in 2005 and pediatric cardiologist in 2007. He did fellowships at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK (PICU, pediatric cardiology, 2003-2005) and at the Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, NL (pediatric cardiology, 2005-2007). From 2009-2011 he further trained in cardiac rehabilitation and obtained the degree of cardiac rehabilitation specialist.
His current research interests are interventional congenital cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation in the chronically ill child, focused on the use of new techniques (e.g. NIRS) and evaluation of different chronic patient groups. He started research projects at the pediatric exercise laboratory of the Princess Elisabeth Children’s Hospital and defended his PhD thesis in 2018 entitled “cardiopulmonary exercise testing in children – beyond the borders”. He is a participating member of AEPC (Eur. Ass. of Pediatric Cardiology) and NVKC (Nederlandse vereniging voor kindercardiologie).
Consultations; Cardiopulmonary Stress test; Rehabilitation; Teaching (Cardiology; Physiology); Clinic manager (Institut Coeur Effort Santé) Medical coordinator (Course du Cœur ; Transforme)
He is a Staff member of the Dept. of Respiratory Medicine, Lung Transplant and Respiratory Intermediate Care Unit, at the University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium since 2012 and Associate Professor of Medicine at Dept. of Chronic Diseases, Metabolism & Ageing (CHROMETA), Lab of Respiratory Diseases, at KU Leuven, Belgium since 2014. His clinical and research interests include the pathophysiology and treatment of acute and chronic lung allograft rejection after lung transplantation. He currently is Senior Clinical Research Fellow of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) and ERS Secretary of Group - 08.02 –Transplantation of European Respiratory Society, board member of the Belgian Transplant Society and Belgian Society for Pneumology.
Combining molecular biological and “Omics” technologies (transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics) exercise-regulated myokines, hepatokines as well as metabolites are studied in primary human muscle cells, mouse exercise models and human exercise intervention studies. Moreover, her lab identified and characterized several serine/threonine phosphorylation sites in insulin receptor substrates and investigates the functional and (patho)physiological relevance.
Johannes Zwerver MD PhD, (nickname Hans) is Professor of Sport & Exercise medicine at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He works as a specialized sports medicine physician at the University Medical Center in Groningen and is section head of the Center for Sport & Exercise medicine within the Center for Rehabilitation and Sports. As a former team physician for professional football , basketball and Dutch cyclo-cross teams he has ample experience in working with both elite and recreational athletes. Promoting ‘Healthy active ageing’ and prescribing ‘Exercise is medicine’ to patients with chronic disease is one of his actual tasks as well. He is also member of the Groningen Transplantoux team and therefore involved in the exercise testing and training guidance of transplant athletes.
His research focusses on etiology, prevention, diagnosis and management of (overuse) injuries, especially tendon problems. As a former high level basketball player he has a special interest for the jumper’s knee. He (co) authored more than 80 peer reviewed papers and book chapters and is editor of an international book on Imaging of Sports Injuries.
