Radboud University Medical Center Members
Mihai Netea (1968) is an internal medicine and infectious diseases specialist, and professor of Experimental Internal Medicine. His work aims to understand the host and environmental factors that influence heterogeneity of the human immune responses. Mihai Netea described long-term memory characteristics in innate immune cells, a process termed trained immunity, that has revolutionized the understanding of immune regulation (Nature Rev Immunol 2020). During the last 5 years he coordinated phase III trials assessing heterologous protection against respiratory infections in the elderly (Cell 2020, Lancet Infect Dis 2021) and COVID-19 (Clin Infect Dis 2021). In addition, his work has put the base on personalized immunotherapy in COVID-19 (Nature Med 2021) and sepsis (Cell Reports Med 2022).
I’m chair of Medical BioSciences at Radboudumc and president of the Dutch Society of Immunology (DSI/NVVI). My research particular focusses on dendritic cells, cancer immunotherapy, and imaging immune responses. I was one of the pioneers translating dendritic cell (DC) biology into potential clinical applications. I am the recipient of VIDI and VICI grants from NWO, the Aspasia award for outstanding female scientist, and the “Huibregtsen Prize”. My primary scientific interest is in DC immunotherapy and our interdisciplinary team was the driving force behind the development of tracking DC behavior in vivo in patients (Acta Biomater 2018).
Yang Li (PhD in 2010) leads the Computational Biology for Infection group at the Radboudumc. Her research focuses on integrating multi-omics and single cell omics data to study the interaction of genetic background and environment, and its contribution to infection and immune-related diseases. Systems genetics/immunology and machine learning approaches are used to investigate how genetic risk factors of the host and their downstream molecular pathways determine and predict the human immune functions, which are crucial to treat immune-related diseases in an individualized manner. For her research, Yang Li has received several personal grants, including NWO-VENI (2013), ZonMw-Offroad (2016), Radboudumc-Hypatia (2018) and NWO-Aspasia (2020). Recently, she just received the prestigious ERC Starting Grant “ModVaccine” on improving vaccine efficiency and an H2020-MSCA-ITN-2020 consortium grant on genetic regulation of immune response.
Saskia Middeldorp (1966) is professor of Medicine and heads the Department of Internal Medicine of the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She was full professor of Medicine at Amsterdam University Medical Centers (2010-2020) where she led the thrombosis and haemostasis research lines. Her research focuses on hereditary and acquired thrombophilia (i.e. risk factors for thrombosis), with a strong focus on generating evidence on optimal use of anticoagulants in pregnant women. She is principal investigator of practice-changing academic trials of anticoagulant therapy in pregnant women, such as the ALIFE (NEJM 2010), ALIFE2 (Lancet 2023) and Highlow (Lancet 2022) randomized controlled trials. She is also involved in the development of new anticoagulant drugs and its antidotes. Currently, she is investigating the role of innate immunity in antiphospholipid syndrome.
Kalijn Bol (1985) is a Medical Oncologist specialized in skin cancer and immunotherapy at the department of Medical Oncology of the Radboudumc. She did a PhD on dendritic-cell based immunotherapy in melanoma at the department of Tumor Immunology, Radboudumc which she completed in 2016 with the cum laude distinction (top 5%). She did a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship on rare melanoma subtypes at the National Center for Cancer Immune Therapy, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her current research focusses on translational research in the field of immunotherapy with specific interest in the visualization of the tumor-immune microenvironment in and ex vivo and immune-quiescent sites such as the eye and the brain. Her expertise is recognized as a ESMO faculty member of the Investigational Immunotherapy group. She has experience leading clinical trials as a principal investigator and leads a large clinical trial support team.
Dr. Raphaël Duivenvoorden is an Associate Professor and internist-nephrologist affiliated with the Nephrology department at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Having obtained his Medical Doctorate (M.D.) from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam in 2006, he subsequently achieved a Ph.D. at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and the Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. At the Radboud University Medical Center, Dr. Duivenvoorden leads a research group. His research focuses on immune responses and immune modulating therapies, with a particular emphasis on kidney transplantation and autoimmune-mediated kidney diseases. He actively participates in teaching activities related to immunology within the Curriculum of Medicine at the Radboud University Medical Center.
Annemiek van Spriel is full Professor of Experimental Immunology at Radboudumc in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her group focuses on understanding the biology of plasma membrane organization in the immune system. She received several personal awards (NWO Vidi Grant, ERC Consolidator Grant, Dutch Cancer Society, ZonMW Open Program, and ERC Proof-of-concept Grant). She is elected president of the Dutch Society for Immunology (NVVI/DSI), board member of the NWO-ENW Personal Grant committee, European B cell network (EBC-net), European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS) Gender & Diversity Task Force, and International Tetraspanin Community. Her research team combines fundamental cell biology with preclinical mouse models to unravel plasma membrane organization in health and disease.
Leo A.B. Joosten is a pathobiologist and full professor of mechanisms of inflammatory diseases at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Joosten is a leading international scientist in the areas of inflammation (Gout) and infectious diseases (Lyme disease). Joosten worked for more than 25 years in Rheumatology research identifying mechanisms of cartilage and bone destruction. One of his discoveries was that IL-1 is the pivotal cytokine mediating joint destruction in RA. His research during the past ten years has focused on the role of cytokines in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammation and was aimed to find novel inhibitors to treat patients with these inflammatory diseases. His recent research is focused on gout, hyperuricemia, and metabolic syndrome. One of his discoveries was that uric acid is able to induce metabolic imprinting of monocytes/ macrophages and that gout patients produce more pro-inflammatory cytokine after ex-vivo stimulation with MSU crystals and TLR ligands. Very recently, he explored the intra- and inter-individual variability of the human immune system, focus on environmental factors, genetics, microbiome. In addition, he demonstrated that HIF-1a is a key transcription factor for Borrelia-mediated host innate immune responses. Using the concept of trained immunity, he showed that IL-32 is an important intracellular cytokine that mediates b-glucan mediated control of an intracellular parasite, Leishmania braziliensis. A very recent (2020) search for the world most cited researchers (Clarivate Analytics, Highly Cited Researchers) showed that Joosten belongs to the top 1% scientists in Immunology.
Romana Netea-Maier (1969) is an endocrinologist and full professor. She combines her clinical work with innovative research focussing on the pathogenesis of endocrine tumors, their long-term consequences, and novel healthcare concepts to improve patient care. An important part of her translational research focuses on the role of the innate immune responses in the pathogenesis of endocrine tumors and their long-term complications. She identified for the first time the proteome characteristic for the thyroid tumors, described the metabolic dysfunction of innate immune cells in thyroid cancer and the changes in myelopoiesis induced by the malignant thyroid process. She is currently the PI for the first study investigating mechanism-based drug repurposing in thyroid cancer within the REPO4EU Euro-Global platform (https://repo4.eu/) funded by Horizon EU. Furthermore, she leads a national multicenter prospective study investigating shared decision making in patients with thyroid cancer.
Frank van de Veerdonk is professor of Immunotherapy of Infectious Diseases and leads the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine at the Radboudumc. His research focuses on understanding the immune recognition and pathophysiology of severe fungal infections, and he described mechanisms through which Aspergillus evades immune recognition (PLoS Pathogens, 2014). He also described important novel immunodeficiencies such as STAT-1 deficiency in chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis (NEJM 2011) and TLR7 deficiency in COVID-19 (JAMA 2021). During the last decade he developed a program for immunotherapy of infectious diseases, pioneering new therapies such as IL-1 blockade in chronic granulomatous diseases (PNAS 2014), and the use of immunotherapeutic approaches in COVID-19 (Nature Med 2022). He is coordinator of the first immunotherapy trial in severe fungal infections (HDM-FUN).
Martijn Verdoes obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Leiden University under the supervision of Prof. H. S. Overkleeft and Prof. G. A. van der Marel in 2008. His thesis work mainly focused on the design and synthesis of activity-based inhibitors and probes to study proteasome function. In 2009, Martijn obtained an NWO Rubicon fellowship to join the lab of prof. M. Bogyo at the Stanford School of Medicine, where he developed quenched activity-based probes (qABPs) for non-invasive imaging of cancer. Inspired by the observation that his qABPs got activated by specific immune cells in tumors he joined the Department of Tumor Immunology at the Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences (RIMLS), Radboudumc in 2013. Since 2016, he is leading a multidisciplinary research group using chemistry to study and manipulate the immune system in cancer. He was awarded an Institute for Chemical Immunology (ICI) Tenure Track Fellowship, as well as an ERC Starting Grant “CHEMCHECK” (Project number 679921) and became a member of the Young Academy of Europe in 2017. In 2019 he secured a tenured assistant professor position. His lab aims to develop strategies for chemistry-based precision immunotherapy using nanomaterials, small molecules and antibody targeted approaches to i) induce a tumor-specific immune response and ii) prime the tumor (microenvironment) for tumor-specific effector immune cells, as well as chemical approaches to visualize these events in complex systems.
Michiel Vermeulen obtained his PhD in the laboratory of Henk Stunnenberg at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where he mainly focused on the functional characterization of transcriptional co-repressor complexes. In 2005 he moved to Munich to join the lab of Matthias Mann. There, he pioneered the application of quantitative mass spectrometry technology to identify proteins that specifically interact with post-translational modifications on core histones. In 2009 he was appointed as assistant professor and in 2013 as associate professor at the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands, where he continued to use quantitative mass-spectrometry to study proteins that interact with chromatin. In 2014 he was appointed full professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where his main research focus is to apply integrative omics approaches to study gene expression regulation in development and disease. The pioneering (interaction) proteomics technology developed by the Vermeulen lab is greatly appreciated by the scientific community, as evidenced by a large number of collaborative studies with leading (inter)national scientists. He was awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant in 2012 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2017. In 2017, Michiel Vermeulen was elected as one of the 43 founding members of the Oncode Institute, a new virtual institute dedicated to fundamental cancer research (www.oncode.nl). In 2019 he was elected as a member of Academia Europaea.
Musa M. Mhlanga (1972) is recognized as an international scientific expert having made ground breaking and international recognized contributions in gene regulation, single cell epigenomics, imaging and microscopy. His work has led to widespread innovations in diagnostics, super resolution microscopy, and fundamental insights into the epigenetic mechanism of trained immunity and gene regulation.
Niels Riksen (1978) is full professor of Vascular Medicine since 2014 and head of the division of Vascular Medicine since 2012. He is specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with cardiovascular disease. His research is dedicated to elucidate the role of innate immune cell reprogramming in the development of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases, with his international research group consisting of physician-scientist and biologists/immunologists. His major contribution to the field is the introduction and proof of the novel concept that innate immune memory contributes to human atherogenesis.
Jorge Domínguez Andrés (1988) studied Pharmacy (University of Salamanca, Spain) achieving the highest score in the country, receiving the National Award for Excellence in Academic Performance. He completed his qualifications at the Hôpital Nord Laennec (Nantes, France) and at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain). In 2017, he defended his PhD thesis on monocyte responses in fungal infections at the University Autónoma of Madrid, Spain (cum laude and Best Thesis Award). Later that year he joined the team of Prof. Mihai Netea at the Radboudumc, where he supervises several PhD and master students and co-ordinates the host-microbe interactions master course at the Radboud University. His main research interests focus on the role of metabolites and epigenetic factors in the modulation of the immune response against pathogens, the study of mechanisms leading to long-term reprogramming of cells of the innate immune system and the elucidation of molecular mechanisms controlling the inflammatory response. He is a lecturer in different bachelor and master programs about infection and immunity (VUmc, UU, RU) and regularly collaborates with different media (press, radio, TEDx). He is a member of the Radboud Young Academy and was recently awarded a Veni grant for the project “Time for a boost: metabolic potentiation of vaccines”.
Michel van den Heuvel, MD, heads the department of respiratory diseases and besides leads a research group on thoracic oncology that focusses on optimizing / personalizing systemic treatment. He has a specific focus on early biomarker development. Currently, as principal investigator of the Dedication consortium his aim is to develop multidimensional biomarkers for the outcome of immunotherapy. In close collaboration with many national and international research groups exhaled breath and liquid biopsy-based diagnostic strategies are being developed that can be used as predictive decision tools as well as, by ways of measuring minimal residual disease, help on treatment decisions early during treatment. By combining this with clinical decision support tools and AI-based radiologic and pathologic image analysis he hopes to achieve the goal to prevent ineffective treatment for this fragile patient population.
I am an internist with infectious diseases specialization. My drive is to translate basic research results into solutions for people living with HIV in industrialized countries and in low-income settings. In collaboration with Mihai Netea and VIIVHealthcareÒ, I coordinate The 2000HIV prospective, cohort study that included 1985 people living with HIV. Study participants are carefully characterized by extensive phenotyping of circulating immune cells. By doing all this, 2000HIV aims to contribute towards a more personalized approach to the best standard-of-care and potential cure for people living with HIV.
Eindhoven University of Technology Members
As a chemistry student, I started working in the field of nanomedicine in 1999. Since then, I have been captivated by the application of nanotechnology in medicine, particularly in immunology. After a 15-year tenure at Mount Sinai, I returned to the Netherlands in the beginning of 2021 to established a unique multidisciplinary ecosystem at Radboudumc and TU/e. It allows young scientists from diverse backgrounds to flourish and mature into the engineers, scientists, and medical doctors of tomorrow, by participating in and driving innovative science today. Through exploration of the biological, chemical and experimental knowledge, we interconnect nanotechnology and immunology with the overarching goal to develop nanomedicine strategies for detrimental immune-mediated diseases.
I am a biomedical engineer with expertise in nanomedicine and RNA therapeutics. After obtaining a PhD at a postdoc appointment from Utrecht University, I secured a Marie Skłodowska-Curie and NWO Veni funding for a postdoc at the University of British Columbia, at Pieter Cullis’ Lab. There, I developed lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology for siRNA therapeutic and mRNA vaccines for COVID-19. I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Precision Medicine group at TU/e. My recent research is supported by NWO Vidi funding, and focuses on platform nanotechnology for delivering RNA therapeutics to specific immune cells and regulating the innate immune response. I have co-authored over 50 publications in leading nanotechnology journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, and ACS Nano.
Vlado Menkovski (PhD in 2013) is Assistant Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research focus is on Machine Learning for Scientific Discovery and Engineering. Particularly analysis of high dimensional data such as images and sequences with Deep Neural Network models. He studies methods that aim at efficient Deep Learning with respect to the amount of expert supervision, and Deep Generative Models for simulation and parameter estimation. The background of Vlado Menkovski also includes a tenure at Philips Research as a Research Scientist involving work in Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis in Digital Histopathology and Interventional Radiology as well as modelling other high dimensional data sources from patient monitoring devices such as ECG and EEG and genomics data. Vlado Menkovski holds a PhD degree (Cum Laude) from Eindhoven University of Technology. He has co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications in various journals and conferences on a range of Machine Learning topics and has 4 granted patents.
Ewelina Kluza (PhD in 2011) defended her PhD thesis on molecular imaging of angiogenesis and therapy monitoring in cancer in 2011 at TU/e. For subsequent two years, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Radiology Department, Maastricht UMC and focused on vascular imaging in rectal cancer patients. In 2013, she moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where she further expanded her expertise in nanomedicine and imaging in the group of prof. Neeman. She subsequently joined a newly established group of prof. Mulder at Amsterdam UMC, where she supervised several PhD students, specialized in advanced microscopy techniques and co-organised the nanomedicine and imaging bachelor course. From 2019, she works in the Precision Medicine group of prof. Mulder at TU/e, which primary goal is to rationally design nanobiologics for the immune system modulation. She supervises and practically contributes to the projects on the RNA and cytokine delivery to myeloid immune cells, and, part-time, she continues her research line on advanced imaging of atherosclerosis at Amsterdam UMC.
Since my PhD in supramolecular chemistry in 2001, I have focused on the modulation protein-protein interactions for diverse biomedical applications. Our group is internationally recognized for its unique work on the stabilization of protein-protein interactions and for delineating the underlying concepts such as cooperativity and multivalency. I am the recipient of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, ERC and VICI grants and have been awarded the Golden Medal of the KNCV, NVBMB Award, and KNAW membership. Our team is highly active in translating research results through the biotech start-up Ambagon Therapeutics (https://ambagontx.com/).
Patricia Dankers is professor in Biomedical Materials & Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). After studying chemistry in Nijmegen, I performed my PhD studies at TU/e on supramolecular biomaterials (2006). After acquiring a second PhD in medical sciences on kidney regenerative medicine, in Groningen (2013), I climbed every step of the academic ladder, starting in 2008, ending in 2017 as full professor. I am the recipient of Veni, Vidi (2008, 2017) and ERC starting, ERC PoC (2012, 2017) grants. I have been awarded the KNCV Gold Medal (2020) and the Ammodo Award for Fundamental Science (2021). I am a co-founder of the spin-off companies UPyTher (2020) and VivArt-X (2022).
I am a professor in protein engineering and dean of the department of Biomedical Engineering. My group operates at the interface of protein engineering, chemical biology and synthetic biology and develops biomolecular sensors and actuators for applications in intracellular imaging, point-of-care diagnostics, and antibody-based therapies. I obtained HFSP, VIDI, and several ERC grants (consolidator, 2x PoC) and also have substantial experience in collaborative research consortia at the national (CTMM, NanoNext, RAAK) and European level (EuroTech, NextDx, ITN CONSENSE). I supervised 20+ PhD and 50+ MSc students, am an associate editor of ACS Sensors, co-founded the start-up Lumabs BV and was awarded the prize for the best TU/e teacher at the master level in 2012.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the TU/e, where I lead the Molecular Machine Learning group. Our research focuses on developing cutting-edge AI technology to accelerate drug discovery, at the interface of computation and experiments. I received my Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Milano-Bicocca, where I developed interpretable AI for molecular property prediction. My research has been recognized with several grants and awards, including the Early Career Award from the Dutch Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the Lush Young Researcher Prize, and an ERC Starting Grant. My mission is to push the boundaries of AI for the molecular sciences, to ultimately augment human creativity in the discovery of next-generation therapeutics.
I founded the Nanoscopy for Nanomedicine Group (N4N) at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Our overarching goal is to develop and use advanced optical imaging techniques to promote innovation in the fields of nanomedicine, diagnostic and precision medicine. Specifically, we focus on (i) the technological development of novel microscopy methods to achieve a multiscale and multidimensional characterization of synthetic and biological objects, (ii) the use of super-resolution microscopy to understand and guide the design of novel materials, from in vitro properties characterization to material-cell interactions and (iii) novel nanoscopy-based tools for diagnostic and precision medicine of cancer.
I obtained my PhD in Cell Biology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2015. Since 2022, I am a Tenure-Track assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and the Institute of Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS). The main scientific goal of my research group is to bioengineer synthetic biological nanorobots that interact with living cells in a controlled and programmable way. We aim at finding innovative approaches on controlling and modulating cell behaviors, using nanorobots as precision medical nanotools for cancer nanomedicine, immunotherapy and regenerative medicine.
I am assistant professor in material chemistry, with expertise in nanotechnology and active matter. Moreover, I am an expert in the characterization of nanoparticles using light scattering as a particle analysis technique that is critical and very useful for understanding the nature of nanoscale assemblies.I have been awarded the young researchers award from the Volkswagen foundation on my work in the field of micro- and nanomachines. Currently, my research consolidates expertise in designing supramolecular polymer assemblies and active matter to generate micro and nanomachines with application potential.
I am the chair of Bio-organic Chemistry and the scientific director of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS) at Eindhoven University of Technology. I am one of the main applicants of two gravitation programs on Functional Molecular Systems (2012) and Interactive Polymer Materials (2022), and I was awarded an ERC Advanced grant. I have been elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, and was awarded the Spinoza premium in 2020. My group’s focus is to develop well-defined compartments for nanomedicine and artificial cell research. We use a combination of techniques, ranging from polymer science to protein engineering to generate well-defined carriers and scaffolds for application in cancer treatment and immunology.
I obtained my PhD in 2013 from the University of Padova (Italy), where my research focused on developing computational models for biological systems. After completing my doctorate, I embarked on a 5-year fellowship at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany) and European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI, Cambridge, UK). In 2018, I was appointed Assistant Professor in Systems Biology for Oncology at TU/e. My research group combines both computational and experimental techniques to study cancer as a complex system, taking a holistic perspective.
My interdisciplinary research is directed towards new engineering approaches to regenerate tissues and organs inside the human body and covers the complete pipeline from basic idea to clinical application. Since 2017, I spearhead the national Gravitation Program ‘Materials-Driven Regeneration’ and in 2022 I received an ERC Advanced Grant to start the RE-ALIGN program on restoring cardiac structural organization in situ. Next to my research, I serve on professional organizations and boards, including the board of the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development. I am elected member of AcademiaNet for Outstanding Female Scientists and Scholars in Europe, and elected lifetime member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
I am an Assistant Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. I founded the ImmunoRegeneration Group with the main goal to understand the interaction between the humane immune cells and the biomaterials of different implants. Our main clinical target is cardiovascular replacements, including heart valves. In 2021, I was awarded an ERC Starting Grant and in 2022 I was elected as a board member of the Netherlands Society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (NBTE).