Jan Steyaert, PhD

Scientific Director at Vrije Universiteit Brussel & VIB

Speaker

Jan Steyaert is full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Research Director of the VIB-VUB center for Structural Biology (VIB) and ERC advanced investigator.

The Steyaertlab pioneered the use of Nanobodies in X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM, aiming at the highest hanging fruits in structural biology including membrane proteins, amyloidogenic proteins, and transient multiprotein complexes.

Current work is focusing on the engineer Nanobodies to be used as research tools in biotechnology and molecular pharmacology and on the discovery of Nanobodies that modulate the function of difficult targets to develop first-in-class drugs.

Jan Steyaert is co-founder of Ablynx (www.ablynx.com) and Agrosafve (www.agrosafve.com), and founder of ConFo Therapeutics (www.confotherapeutics.com), three successful biotech spin-offs that valorize the unique family of single domain antibodies (nanobodies) in agronomy or therapy.