Willem Mulder appointed professor of Precision Medicine

by time news
October 4, 2022

Willem Mulder has been appointed professor of Precision Medicine at Radboudumc / Radboud University. He develops new drugs for immunotherapy against cancer, inflammation, rejection reactions and infectious diseases. An intensive collaboration with Eindhoven University of Technology and the technology company BioTrip enables efficient and complete development of medicines from the lab table to the patient.

Willem Mulder has been appointed professor for the fourth time in his life. This time at the Department of Internal Medicine at Radboudumc. He was previously professor at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, at Amsterdam UMC and at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Mulder: ‘My goal is to actually make new medicines available to patients. That is now perfectly possible, because at Radboudumc we are close to the clinic, we develop the technology at TU/e, and we arrange the clinical roll-out via our BV BioTrip.’

Courier service

Mulder and his team are developing immunotherapy against cancer, inflammation, rejection reactions after transplantation and infectious diseases, such as COVID-19. He does not treat the disease directly, but directs the immune system in a certain direction, so that the body itself gets to work. ‘Different diseases require different applications of immunotherapy’, says Mulder. ‘In cancer you want to activate immune cells so that they can clear up the disease. After a transplant you want to inhibit the immune cells, so that the body does not reject the new organ.’

For this immunotherapy, Mulder uses nanoscale materials of the body, which can bind specifically to immune cells. Those nanomaterials are loaded with drugs. For example, they work as a kind of courier service in the body to deliver medicines to the right place. Those drugs, such as RNA or proteins, can do their job once they have arrived at the immune cells. They stimulate the immune cells to take certain actions in a natural way.

Innate immune system

The researchers direct the immune response at a very early stage. ‘We aim at the innate part of the immune system, less at the acquired part,’ explains Mulder. ‘For an organ transplant, for example, the current standard treatment consists of drugs that suppress the activated immune system. But because of this, people are prone to infections and develop cancer. What we do is prevent the immune system from being activated. We focus on precursors of immune cells in the bone marrow.’

And with success: for example, two laboratory animals have been living with a transplanted heart for two years now, without ever having received the traditional medicines that suppress the immune system. They were only given the natural nanomaterials with drugs that target the innate immune system. Mulder is now busy with the translation to people.

Incubator

The technology that Mulder works with is largely patented. That intellectual property is housed in a biotechnology company called Biotrip BV. Mulder: ‘This is an incubator for biotechnology. From there we set up new companies that, with the help of investors, can further develop the medicines and make them available to patients.’

Mulder (Mexico City, 1976) studied chemistry at Utrecht University and obtained his PhD in biomedical technology at Eindhoven University of Technology. He worked at several renowned institutes. He has received many grants for his research, including NIH grants, NWO Vidi and Vici, and ERC. In addition to his position at Radboudumc, Mulder also has a part-time appointment at TU/e ​​and works for BioTrip.

The appointment will take effect on 1 September and is for a period of five years.

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