Cees Van Kooten PhD

Cees van Kooten (1963) is professor in Experimental Nephrology and Transplant Immunology since 2009. He is heading the Immunological Research Laboratory of the section Nephrology of the department of Internal Medicine. Cees van Kooten studied biology at the University of Amsterdam with specializations in immunology and molecular biology and graduated in 1987. At the end of his studies he did in the framework of an exchange program several months of research on the role of IL6 in urinary tract infections at the Department of Clinical Immunology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Afterwards, he started on his doctoral research in Amsterdam in the Department Autoimmune diseases of the CLB (the “blood bank”). In 1992 he successfully defended his dissertation, entitled “The role of cytokines in the activation of human malignant B cells”. Subsequently, he spent two years as a postdoctoral work at the renowned immunological research Institute from Schering Plough in Lyon, France, headed by Dr Jacques Banchereau. Here he studied the molecular interactions between T-and B-cells.

In 1995, he moved to the Department of Nephrology of the LUMC in Leiden to study the role of growth factors and cytokines in tubulointerstitial fibrosis. This was followed by a fellowship from the Royal Dutch Academy of Science (KNAW) fellowship at the LUMC to investigate the role of CD40-CD40L in the rejection of transplanted kidneys. In 2003 he became associate professor and in 2009 he was appointed as professor in Experimental Nephrology and Transplant Immunology at the Leiden University Medical Center.