Liesbeth Desmet

This study engineers HPD variants with enhanced NTBC tolerance to restore tyrosine metabolism while maintaining catalytic activity and MHC-II binding properties.

This study establishes a human-relevant HGD knockout hepatic in vitro model to investigate the metabolic consequences of alkaptonuria and identifies a chronic stress-adaptive survival state in HGD-deficient hepatocytes.

This study uses directed evolution to identify amino acid substitutions that modulate HGD activity outside the catalytic pocket, revealing non-additive effects and structural impacts on enzyme function.