Dr. Annemiek van Spriel, PhDProfessor of Experimental Immunology at Radboud University Medical CenterSpeaker
Profile
Annemiek van Spriel (born 1973) is full Professor of Experimental Immunology at Radboud university medical center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her group focuses on understanding the biology of membrane protein organisation which ensures proper cell function. Her research has made fundamental contributions to comprehending the function of tetraspanin proteins in the immune system and in cancer cells. Her group discovered that tetraspanins can protect against development of B-cell lymphoma, and that impaired membrane organisation results in signalling defects and immune deficiencies. Her team combines fundamental cell biology with preclinical mouse models to unravel plasma membrane organisation in health and disease. The aim of her research is to unravel the molecular mechanisms that underlie tetraspanin microdomain function and signalling in immune cells in relation to the development of malignant disease.
Annemiek van Spriel obtained her Master’s degree in 1996 from the University of Utrecht (cum laude) and her PhD degree in immunology in 2001 from the University of Utrecht. She pursued a long-term Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Leukocyte Membrane Laboratory of Ass. Prof. Mark Wright (Burnet Institute, Melbourne, Australia). In 2004, she joined the Tumor Immunology Department in the Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences (RIMLS), and started her own research line focused on investigating tetraspanins in immune cells in relation to the development of cancer. She obtained several personal grants from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF). In 2012, she organized the 5th European Conference on Tetraspanins in Nijmegen. She has been awarded the prestigious NWO-VIDI and Aspasia grants for her work on tetraspanin proteins in the immune system. In 2016 she received an ERC Consolidator Grant to conduct research on the plasma membrane of cancer cells, and in 2018 she was appointed as Full Professor of Experimental Immunology at Radboud University Medical Center.