Thierry VandenDriessche's Biography

Thierry VandenDriessche, Group Leader, Free University of Brussel (VUB)

Dr. VandenDriessche obtained his PhD at the Free University of Brussels (Belgium) in 1992 and was a visiting fellow at the Weizmann Institute for Science (Israel). He continued his research as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health (USA) in the lab of gene therapy pioneers Dr. R. Michael Blaese, Dr. Rick Morgan and Dr. W. French Anderson, where he started his research on gene therapy for hemophilia. He was subsequently recruited to the University of Leuven (Belgium) and the Flanders Institute of Biotechnology (VIB) at the Center for Transgene Technology & Gene Therapy directed by Dr. Désiré Collen. He had joined the lab of Dr. Rob Kotin & Dr. Marshal Nirenberg at the NIH as a sabbatical fellow. He subsequently worked at the Vesalius Research Center headed by Dr. Peter Carmeliet. In 2010, he became Full Professor at the University of Leuven and at the Free University of Brussels, where he is now tenured Director of the Department of Gene Therapy & Regenerative Medicine. He served as President of the European Society of Gene & Cell Therapy. Dr. VandenDriessche has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications and is the recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Achievement Award of the European Society of Gene & Cell Therapy and Excellence in Research Award of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy. His main research focuses on gene therapy for hereditary diseases, particularly hemophilia and muscular dystrophy, development of improved gene therapy and genome engineering technologies and iPS-based stem cell therapies.