Title and Position:

Professor Immunopharmacology at Utrecht University

Chief Scientific Advisor Nutricia Research

Education:

Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Johan Garssen studied medicine and biology at the Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He specialised in immunology, pharmacology and biochemistry and finished both studies in 1987 cum laude. He finished his PhD thesis at the University of Utrecht in 1991 on the role of T cells in respiratory allergy, an immunopharmacological approach. This PhD programme was partly performed at Yale University, New Haven, USA.

After a postdoc period he became senior scientist at the National Institute of Public Health in the Netherlands. There he coached many research projects, both preclinical as well as clinical research, in the field of immunomodulation induced by a.o. nutritional ingredients, drugs and environmental agents.

In 2002 he became head of the section immunology at Numico-Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands. Since October 2008 he became director of the immunology platform of Danone, division for specialised nutrition (medical nutrition and infant nutrition). Since 2022 Chief Scientific Advisor Nutricia Danone research. In addition, since 2005, he is programme leader and since 2007 full professor “immunopharmacology” at the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences. As of 2022 he is chair of the future food utrecht research hub/community. He published over 950 peer reviewed papers in the field of “immunomodulation”.