Cornelis Verweij's Biography

Cornelis Verweij, Professor, VU University Medical Centre

Cornelis L. Verweij received his PhD in 1987 from the University of Amsterdam on his studies on the cloning and biosynthesis of von Willebrand factor (vWF). After completion of his PhD-study he was awarded a 2 year EMBO-long term fellowship to study the effect of the immune suppressive drug Cyclosporin A on T-cell activation and IL-2 gene regulation in the lab of Professor Gerald R. Crabtree at Stanford University. In 1991 he joined the faculty of the Leiden University Medical Center, where he studied T- and B-cell biology, and the functional aspects of cytokine genetics in relation to auto-immune diseases, in particular rheumatoid arthritis. As a recipient of a Fulbright award he gained extensive experience in genomic profiling studies during a sabbatical year in the lab of Professor Patrick O. Brown at Stanford University. Since 2001 he is professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and head of the section of Inflammatory Disease Profiling at the VU University medical center (VUmc) in Amsterdam. From 2005 till 2007 he was also head of Biomarker Development in Immunology at Novartis, Basel.
Prof Verweij’s major area of research is in the molecular profiling of patients with chronic inflammatory diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. He and his colleagues operate a systems biology science program in which state-of-the-art genomics and proteomics techniques are applied to elucidate biological pathways and drug-targets that underlie inflammatory diseases, and to identify biomarkers for (very)early diagnosis, prognosis, and preventive- and personalized medicine.