Can you give us a brief description of your role at Toxys?

I mostly work on improving our current assays and developing new assays for genetic toxicology. I was involved in developing and publishing TubulinTracker, a GFP-based assay to study microtubule poisons, and in developing DNA Repair-Profiler. I have co-developed MutaTracker, our newest assay to assess the genotoxic and mutagenic potential of substances, and am currently the Study Director for MutaTracker.

Tell us about your educational background and previous experiences.

I graduated from a master’s degree program in biomedical sciences from the Leiden University Medical Center. Then, during my PhD research at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, I studied transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair and the transcription stress response. This work involved plenty of immunoprecipitations, western blots, and live-cell imaging. I learned a lot about the different DNA damage repair pathways and the consequences of DNA damage in general. This was very convenient when working on DNA Repair-Profiler and helped me when I started working on genetic toxicology.

What kind of methods, tools and equipment do you regularly use?

My work is divided between the lab and the desk. Because our company has a focus on stem cell-based assays, working in the lab requires a lot of cell culture work. While developing and validating MutaTracker, I have exposed our unique reporter cell lines to known substances to measure reporter induction by flow cytometry and to determine the mutation induction using error-corrected sequencing. Nowadays, my focus shifted more towards planning experiments, analyzing data, and preparing scientific content (for example for conferences), so you can mostly find me behind my computer.

What are the roles of other people whom you often collaborate with?

Our genetic toxicology team includes people with different roles: director, scientist, associate scientist, assistant scientist, and study investigator. We work closely together to set up experiments and analyze data for client and R&D projects. Finally, I collaborate with our marketing team to present scientific content on our website or flyers.

What is the impact your work has on what a customer receives?

The most important part of my work is a good experimental set-up to answer the right question and to include the proper controls. Also analyzing data is very important as this can influence data representation.

What are the most challenging and rewarding things about your work?

Toxys is a high-paced workplace. This means that days can get really busy, and I need to manage my time well. Finishing a project is quite rewarding and I can be proud of what we accomplished. This doesn’t mean we can relax though! The next project and challenge always await around the corner!

In your opinion, what is the best thing about working at Toxys?

The people. I like working in a growing company with enthusiastic colleagues. I also like that we continue to develop new assays and expand our portfolio.

Finish this sentence: At Toxys, we always…

Look for solutions! We try to think along with customers to find approaches that fit their requests, and we are constantly working on improving our genotoxicity testing portfolio and services.

What do you like to do when you are not at work?

I spend most of my free time with my husband and two sons (7 months and 3 years). I also like to read, bake, go to concerts, and be outdoors.

Learn more!

Would you like to learn more about Marit’s main focus? Check out our MutaTracker page or reach out. You are also welcome to join our webinar!

If you are interested in joining the team, visit our career page.