Niels Eijkelkamp's Biography

Niels Eijkelkamp, Associate Professor, University Medical Center Utrecht

Niels Eijkelkamp studied Biomedical Sciences at the University of Utrecht (Utrecht, the Netherlands) He received his PhD in 2009 at the Utrecht University where he worked on GRKs in the regulation of pain, and inflammation. He then did his first postdoctoral training at a joint-position at the University Medical Center Utrecht and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he worked on intracellular signaling in sensory neurons. He continued as a PostDoctoral fellow at the University College London where he further worked on signaling and mechanotransduction in pain, including Piezos. In 2015 he was appointed Associate Professor at the Center for Translational Immunology at the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Dr. Eijkelkamp’s current work focusses on elucidating the cellular and molecular basis of neuro-immune interactions in pain resolution and chronification. His work has identified intriguing roles of immune cell and cytokines that regulate sensory pathways after nerve damage, osteoarthritis and inflammation. As example his group identified that nervous tissue macrophages donate their mitochondria to sensory neurons to stop pain (Neuron, 2022). Based on these novel insights his work has contributed to the identification of novel strategies to treat chronic pain including, but not limited to, fusion of anti-inflammatory cytokines to trigger endogenous resolution pathways (PNAS, 2021).