Jan Van Meerbeeck PhD

Professor Jan Van Meerbeeck was obtaining his medical degree magna cum laude from the University of Antwerp in 1980, he completed training to become a board-certified specialist in internal medicine and pulmonology. He is a skilled interventional pulmonologist and obtained his PhD in 1997 with a dissertation on the presentation of lung cancer in Flanders, Belgium. He is a professor of Thoracic Oncology at both Ghent and Antwerp University and practised as a thoracic oncologist from 1986-1996 at Antwerp University Hospital, Belgium and from 1996-2003 at Erasmus MC-Daniel den Hoed Kliniek, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. From 2003 to 2013 he was Chair of the Thoracic Oncology Program at Ghent University Hospital, where he became also Divisional Head and CMO. His translational scientific interests include the molecular diagnosis of mesothelioma and lung cancer and the evaluation of biomarkers of asbestos exposure and mesothelioma. He is or has been the study coordinator or Principal Investigator for numerous international phase II and III studies in thoracic oncology and respiratory medicine. He is the promoter of several master thesis students and research fellows, of which 5 successfully obtained their PhD.

Professor van Meerbeeck has served the Lung Cancer Group of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) as secretary, chairman and currently as a board member. He is a full member of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), currently as part of its Staging and Ethical Committees and previously as a member of its Scientific Advisory Committee. Professor van Meerbeeck has an extensive presentation and publication track, with more than 200 peer-reviewed articles in oncology and pulmonology journals and textbooks. He also serves on the review and editorial boards of several international journals and has organized several national and international meetings.