Stefan Nierkens PhD

Dr. Nierkens is Principal Investigator of the Boelens/Nierkens research group and is head of the Utrecht Center for Diagnostic Advances in Immunology Research, U-DAIR.

He received his Ph.D. from the Utrecht University and was trained as a tumor-immunologist at the Tumor Immunology Laboratory of the RIMLS (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (La Jolla, CA). He has long-standing experience in studying the role of dendritic cells (DC) and DC-vaccines in various pre-clinical immunotherapy models. In 2012 Nierkens translated his work on DC vaccines together with Jaap Jan Boelens resulting in the U-DANCE-project, in which he develops (adjuvant) immuno-therapies to make cord blood cell transplantation safer and more effective.

From 2012 he is the head of U-DAIR, an intramural immune monitoring laboratory of the Laboratory of Translational Immunology (LTI-UMCU) facilitating translational research in 30+ clinically well-defined cohorts of patients suffering from inflammatory and immune-mediated diseases. U-DAIR develops, optimizes and validates an immunomonitoring program to enable standardized cohort research and thereby identifies new biomarkers to diagnose immune-mediated disorders and explores potential treatment strategies. Nierkens was selected for a 36-month training program to become a Laboratory Specialist in Medical Immunology.