Joris de Wit is a professor in the Department of Neurosciences at KU Leuven and a group leader and deputy science director at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research in Belgium. He obtained his Ph.D. in the lab of Joost Verhaagen at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam on the role of secreted axon guidance molecules and neurotrophin receptors. For his postdoctoral training, he worked with Matthijs Verhage at Vrije University in Amsterdam on the mechanisms of neuropeptide release in neurons and then joined the lab of Anirvan Ghosh at the University of California, San Diego, working on the molecular mechanisms of specific synaptic connectivity.

Research in the de Wit lab focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern the development and maintenance of synaptic connectivity. A significant part of their research involves understanding cell-surface interactions and their implications for basic synapse biology as well as neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions.

Utilizing innovative proteomic approaches, the lab uncovered significant ligand-receptor interactions, highlighting the role of leucine-rich repeat-containing receptors in synapse development. They have also shed light on the intracellular sorting mechanisms that control the distribution of cell-surface receptors at synapses. Investigating how cell-surface interactions specify synapse development, the lab has demonstrated the input-specific and combinatorial role of postsynaptic receptors in shaping the properties of synaptic inputs in developing hippocampal pyramidal neurons.

To gain a comprehensive understanding of synaptic cell-surface receptor networks, the de Wit lab has developed approaches to analyze the proteome and cell-surface interactome of specific synapses, such as the hippocampal mossy fiber-CA3 synapse. Currently, they are unraveling the function of identified proteins and expanding this work by dissecting the synaptic protein composition of hippocampal and cortical pyramidal neuron cell types using proximity proteomics.