Michiel Pegtel's Biography

Michiel Pegtel, Associate Professor, Cancer Center Amsterdam, VU University Medical Center

Dirk Michiel Pegtel is an associate professor at the department of pathology (Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc, The Netherlands) and director of the Amsterdam UMC Liquid Biopsy Center. Michiel conducted his practical training as an undergraduate student at the National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, USA) and obtained a PhD in Immunology at Tufts University Medical School working on virus-induced cancers in collaboration with MIT Broad Institute (Boston, USA). After postdoctoral training at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in basic cell biology, he started the Exosomes Research group at the Amsterdam UMC. Current members of his group study fundamental principles of exosome biogenesis and small RNA biology with the purpose of developing liquid biopsy strategies and using exosomes for therapeutic delivery. For his early discovery on exosomal-transfer of miRNA, Michiel was awarded the Beijerinck Premium from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. Next to his academic work Michiel is an inventor and cofounder of ExBiome a molecular diagnostics start-up.