Yvette van Kooyk

Yvette van Kooyk is professor and head of the department Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology at AmsterdamUMC, location VUmc. Van Kooyk’s research team studies innate and adaptive immune responses guided by glycosylation. Her team unravels cellular communication driven by modified glycoproteins/lipids in cancer and inflammatory diseases. Central in her work is the development of new glycan modified immune therapy for cancer through targeting glycan binding receptors on skin resident antigens presenting cells to induce cancer immunity. Her second line of research is aimed to discover of glycan imposed regulatory immune imprinting by inflamed tissue and tumor microenvironment. She studies these questions in various clinical models to identify these cellular communication at omics level in the context of tissue alterations, such as the Sialic acid-Siglec axis as immune checkpoint. She has published over 290 peer reviewed articles such as in Cell, Nature, Nature Immunology, Nat Comm, PNAS, has supervised 30 PhD students

She was awarded various NWO grants (PIONIER-ASPASIA), ERC Advanced, Eurostars and received the SPINOZA and van Loghem award for life time achievements in field of (Glyco)-Immunology, and is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW) and the Academia Europeae. She valorizes her discoveries in the start-ups DC4U and Glycotreat.