Klaas Poelstra

Klaas Poelstra (1964) holds a PhD in Medical Biology. Since 2005 he is Professor of Drug Targeting and Chairman of the Department of Nanomedicine and Drug Targeting at the Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy (GRIP), University of Groningen. In 2013 he was deputy-director of the Pharmacy degree program of the Faculty of Science ; Engineering and from 2014 to 2019 vice-dean of this faculty with responsibility for 40 bachelor and master degree programs.

His research activities are dedicated to the design of innovative drug targeting strategies with special focus on the liver. His group designs novel therapeutic proteins that selectively accumulate in key pathogenic cells to treat chronic inflammatory and fibrotic diseases. Many of his projects are dedicated to the delivery of drugs to myo-fibroblast-like cells (e.g. hepatic stellate cells) that play a role in liver fibrosis, glomerulosclerosis or stroma-rich tumours. He was

co-founder of BiOrion Technologies BV and inventor of several compounds that are now further developed and examined in clinical trials (Phase I to III) by several Biotech start-ups, such as BiOrion Technologies BV and AM-Pharma BV. In 2000 he was awarded the ;NWO Innovational Research Incentives Scheme" ("Vernieuwingsimpuls") and received the Dutch Galenus Research Award 2003 from the Dutch prime minister. In 2006 he received the prestigious;VICI gran; a personal grant for outstanding, senior researchers in the Netherlands. He is author of over 130 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and co-inventor of 8 patent-families.