Dr. Sabine Langie

Biography

Dr. Langie's overall research interest is the study of early-life exposures to xenobiotic agents, specific dietary compounds, and/or environmental factors that influence a person's sensitivity to genome stability and predispose to pathological diseases in life. With over 20 years of experience in the field of genotoxicology and molecular epidemiology, she mainly focuses on analyzing biomarkers of DNA damage, DNA repair, and DNA methylation, linking exposures to disease outcomes. Sabine obtained her PhD from the Department of Health Risk Analysis & Toxicology at Maastricht University, on the topic of "Nutritional modulation of DNA repair". Her work has spanned a full range of studies involving cells in vitro, experimental animals, and human volunteers contributing to genetic toxicology. From April 2009 to June 2012, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University (UK), studying the modulation of epigenetic modifications of DNA repair in the aging brain of mice. In 2012, she received an AXA postdoctoral fellowship to research the effects of early-life exposures on epigenetic marks underlying the developmental origins of respiratory allergies. She received the Cefic-LRI Innovative Science Award in 2013, enabling her to broaden her research to analyze DNA methylation in the saliva of children with respiratory allergies participating in Flemish birth cohorts. From 2015 to 2019, she focused on using non-invasive biomatrices in biomonitoring studies and identifying epigenetic biomarkers to assess risks of developing complex diseases. Sabine has also examined the role of genome instability in obesity. From October 2017 to September 2020, she was appointed as a guest professor at Hasselt University, overseeing an MSc course on Experimental Design. Returning to Maastricht University in 2020, she became a lecturer and was promoted to assistant professor in 2022, currently establishing her research on DNA repair and mitochondrial function in complex diseases such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, and cancer, with a focus on the health effects of a plant-based diet.

Research Interests

Experience