Johan Neyts

Johan Neyts is full professor of Virology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He teaches virology at the medical school and at the school of dentistry. His lab has a long-standing expertise in the development of antivirals strategies and drugs against emerging and neglected viral infections such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya and other alphaviruses, enteroviruses, noroviruses, HEV and rabies and is intensively involved in the search for antiviral strategies against SARS-CoV2. A second focus of the lab is the development of a novel vaccine technology platform technology based on the yellow fever virus vaccine as a vector; this include among others vaccines against rabies and SARS-CoV2. His team is also developing a technology, the PLLAV (Plasmid Launched Live Attenuated Virus); which allows to rapidly engineer highly thermostable vaccines against multiple viral pathogens. Johan is past-president of the International Society for Antiviral Research (www.isar-icar.com). Four classes of antivirals discovered in his laboratory have been licensed to major pharmaceutical companies (two on HCV, one on dengue and one on rhino/enteroviruses). He published >520 papers in peer reviewed journals and has given ~240 invited lectures and provides content to a larger audience via lay-press.