Professor Teun van Gelder was trained as an internist – clinical pharmacologist. He currently has a full time position at the Leiden University Medical Center, in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy & Toxicology. He was appointed professor in Clinical Pharmacology, in particular Drug Discovery & Development in December 2019.

More information about Teun van Gelder

Academic Pharma

The Leiden University has made strategic funds available for Translational Drug Discovery & Development, and the position of Teun van Gelder is part of a larger plan to stimulate  “Academic Pharma”. Within “Academic Pharma” innovative new drugs (or new drug targets) will be discovered and developed. The primary focus will be to develop drugs for which pharmaceutical industry has less interest, either because they are for a rare disease (or otherwise small patient population) or because of patent expiration. The national ZonMW program Future Affordable and Sustainable Therapies (FAST) perfectly matches the Leiden initiative.

Academic career

Teun van Gelder (1962) studied medicine, and was trained in internal medicine and nephrology, in Rotterdam. In 1996 he defended his thesis on the safety and efficacy of a monoclonal antibody directed against the interleukin-2 receptor in patients after kidney and heart transplantation. In 1998 and 1999 he spent 18 months as a post-doc in the Laboratory of Transplantation Immunology (PI = Dr Randall E Morris), at Stanford University (USA).

After returning to the Netherlands he also obtained a degree in clinical pharmacology. From  2000-2019 Teun worked as an internist-nephrologist (in the kidney transplant program) and as internist – clinical pharmacologist. His research then focused on developing personalized treatment strategies, based on novel therapeutic drug monitoring strategies and on clinical implementation of pharmacogenetics. Besides immunosuppressive drugs also antibiotics and oncolytic drugs were part of this research program.  In 2010 he was appointed professor in Clinical Pharmacology at Erasmus Medical Center.  In December 2019 he was recruited by the Leiden University Medical Center, where he was appointed professor in Clinical Pharmacology, in particular Drug Discovery & Development. His inaugural lecture will be on February 5, 2021.