Lien Moreels

Lien Moreels, PhD is a Scientist Translational Research in the VIB Discovery Sciences (DS) unit of the VIB Innovation and Business (I&B) team.

The aim of the VIB DS team is to translate and valorize academic research findings into new products, medicines, and therapies. As part of VIB DS, Lien is mostly working on Nanobody®/VHH and antibody discovery and valorization projects in close collaboration with several academic groups of the VIB community, VIB technologies and her colleagues of VIB I&B.

Lien is a MSc of Bio-engineering (KU Leuven) and has done her PhD in the Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology (KU Leuven) under supervision of Prof. Dr. Jan Tytgat. The goal of her PhD project was to identify new inhibitors of the voltage-gated ion channel Kv10.1, a tumor-associated antigen. In her search for novel Kv10.1 inhibitors, she mostly focused on natural peptide toxins from venomous animals such as scorpions and sea anemones. After her PhD, Lien moved to Cambridge, UK to work as a scientist (and later senior scientist) at IONTAS, a biotechnology company focused on antibody discovery and development. At IONTAS, Lien was mostly working on the KnotBody® technology (now part of Maxion Therapeutics), identifying and characterizing antibody-like drugs targeting ion channels.