Gert Jan Lammers is professor of Neurology. The titel of his chair is: Sleep disorders, in particular narcolepsy and related vigilance disturbances. He is the medical director of the third line Sleep-Wake Centres of SEIN (Heemstede, Zwolle and Groningen), and also affiliated with the department of Neurology of the LUMC. The Sleep Wake Centre of SEIN has been designated by the NFU as a center of expertise for narcolepsy and related disorders. The current appointment is the first in the Netherlands dedicated to Sleep Medicine. Gert Jan Lammers is the current chair of the Dutch Society for Sleep Medicine (Slaapgeneeskunde Vereniging Nederland, SVNL). He is co-founder of the European Narcolepsy Network (EU-NN) and served as president from 2007-2014.

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Gert Jan Lammers is professor of Neurology. The titel of his chair is: Sleep disorders, in particular narcolepsy and related vigilance disturbances.
He is the medical director of the third line Sleep-Wake Centres of SEIN (Heemstede, Zwolle and Groningen), and also affiliated with the department of Neurology of the LUMC. 
The Sleep Wake Centre of SEIN has been designated by the NFU as a center of expertise for narcolepsy and related disorders.
The current appointment is the first in the Netherlands dedicated to Sleep Medicine.
Gert Jan Lammers is the current chair of the Dutch Society for Sleep Medicine (Slaapgeneeskunde Vereniging Nederland, SVNL).
He is co-founder of the European Narcolepsy Network (EU-NN) and served as president from 2007-2014.

Sleep

The chair focuses on the causes and impact of complaints of excessive daytime sleepiness. Excessive sleepiness with its associated concentration problems is an important social problem because it leads to cognitive impairment and poses safety risks in the sense of increased accident risk (e.g. in traffic, or when operating dangerous machinery). Moreover, the symptoms are caused not only by neurological disorders such as narcolepsy but also, and much more frequently, by inappropriate sleeping habits in the general population.

We discovered, in 2000, in collaboration with researchers at Stanford University, that narcolepsy is caused by a selective loss of hypocretin-producing cells in the brain (hypothalamus). This has led, among other things, to essential new insights into the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, and into the evolutionary entanglement between sleep and other basal functions, especially metabolism.  But also to the development of new classes of medications: both hypocretin antagonists and more recently hypocretin agonists. Current research focuses primarily on the cause, implications and treatment of the loss of hypocretin-producing cells. The research is embedded at LUMC in the "Neuroscience" theme.

Academic career

During my training as a neurologist I started the scientific research on narcolepsy resulting in my PhD in 1999 on the thesis entitled: "Narcolepsy". Since then, the research focused on causes for increased daytime sleepiness. I managed to contribute to the establishment of important international collaborations. One of these was the establishment of the "European Narcolepsy Network." I was co-founder and its first president.

Ultimately, the fruits of these collaborations led to my appointment as full professor in 2020. The "oratie" was on May 20, 2022 and was titled: "De slaap vatten".

Publications