HUB Organoids (HUB) was founded by the Hubrecht Institute, the University Medical Center Utrecht, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) to refine organoid development and foster organoid adoption globally. HUB Organoid Technology represents a paradigm-shift that bridges the gap between the lab and the clinic and effectively brings a “patient in the lab®” for drug discovery and development, preclinical patient stratification, predictive biomarker discovery, personalized medicine, clinical trials, regenerative medicine, and companion diagnostics applications.
discover our technologyRobert received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Leiden University Medical Center where he studied oncogenic cell transformation in the lab of Prof. van de Eb. He subsequently moved to Stanford University (USA) to pursue his post-doctoral career on neural stem cells. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he joined the group of Prof. Hans Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute where he was involved in the development of the breakthrough “Organoid Technology” that allows the expansion of adult stem cells and the development of “mini-organs in a dish”. Rob is currently CEO of HUB, which was founded to further develop and refine the Organoid Technology.
Bahar received her Ph.D. in disruptive innovation by genetically modified technologies from the University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University of Rotterdam under the supervision of Prof. Ab Osterhaus and Prof. Eric Claassen.
She joined HUB in 2017 with a background in MPA, infectious diseases, and genetically modified vaccines. Prior to joining HUB, she served as Director Business Development at ViroNovative B.V. and Sovalacc B.V., a biotechnology company and life sciences consultancy, respectively. In these positions, she was responsible for all the aspect of business development, including out-licensing and alliance management. Furthermore, she has been involved in the start-up and growth of several business ventures in the life sciences sector.
Sylvia received her PhD in 2006 at the University of Barcelona, Spain for her work at the Hospital Clinic in the laboratory of Prof. Jorge Ferrer, where she conducted functional genetic analysis to understand the transcriptional role of MODY genes in pancreatic beta cells. With a long term EMBO fellowship, she subsequently joined the Hubrecht Institute (Utrecht, the Netherlands) as a postdoctoral fellow. In the laboratory of Prof. Hans Clevers she first studied the role of TCF7L2 in regulating metabolism. Then, she established human pancreas organoids from tumor resections in collaboration with the Surgery and Pathology departments from the UMC and the laboratory of Prof. D.A. Tuveson.
In 2014, she joined HUB as one of the founding scientists and worked as a Group Leader for the cystic fibrosis and pancreatic cancer organoid programs. In 2016, she was appointed Scientific Director at HUB and in her new role she was responsible for leading both the contract service and research programs. Under Sylvia´s leadership the Organoid Technology evolved from a highly innovative basic research tool to a industry leading drug development platform. Since 2020 she holds the position of Chief Scientific Officer.
Herman’s educational background is in business economics, including a post-doc CPA at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Herman brings more than 20 years of financial experience in various roles at multinational corporations where he has contributed to developing a clear strategy and execution path.
Herman has worked at GSK for over 10 years in different roles and in different countries, growing to executive level, with responsibilities including all area of finance – such as accounting, planning and control, tax and business partnering – supply chain, IT, procurement, and program management. From GSK Herman moved to Teva and later on Cipla. He recently joined the Greyt network of experienced CFO’s who support scale-ups in realizing their growth ambition.
Bhushan has an MBA from Amsterdam Business School and a master's degree in Polymer Physics from University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He has more than 14 years experience in the field of life science and healthcare. Bhushan began his career working at Philips Research and then expanded his avenue in healthcare industry by working with Polyganics B.V a Netherland-based start-up. Prior to joining HUB, Bhushan was working at Elekta B.V, which specializes in radiation therapy medical devices. He brings operational expertise and experience from medical devices industry which was his last area of work in life science before joining HUB Organoids.
Bhushan joined HUB in 2020 as Director of Operations with a background in operational excellence and a focus on program and change management.
Gerard has a track record of experience in the health care industry spanning over 25 years. He obtained his medical degree from Utrecht University. Following his academic degree, he has held various international executive position including a senior position at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). From 2006 to 2012 he served as President and CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals Europe. In this role he was deeply involved in many successful acquisitions of Teva. Since 2013 he is an independent healthcare industrial advisor. Gerard currently serves as Chairman of the Board for Bavarian Nordic A/S. He also is Chairman of the Board of Curaeos B.V. and until recently Chairman of HTL-Strefa S.A. Before this Gerard has been Chairman of Merus N.V. and Syntarga B.V. and non-executive board member on the Board of UDG Healthcare plc, Neurogen A/S, and Alvogen Sárl. He is member of the advisory board of the Dutch Medicine Agency.
Carine is a lawyer with a unique proposition. She combines 30 years of legal experience in life sciences with a medical background and in-depth knowledge of the biotech and technology markets. She has an international transaction practice with focus on intellectual property licensing and M&A.
Because of her wide experience and expertise, Carine frequently functions as jury member for life sciences venture awards. She is Chair of the life science cluster of the Take-off grant committee financing early-stage, innovative academic starters and a member of the Board of HollandBio. Carine lectures at Leiden University, BioBusiness Summerschool, VUmc Oncology master course and Northern Knowledge Cluster/Venture Lab in Groningen.
Eva van Rooij attended the University Hospital Maastricht in the Netherlands where she received a Ph.D. in the department of Cardiology. She then went on to complete postdoctoral training in Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the lab of Dr. Eric Olson where she served as lead scientist in the studies that linked microRNAs to cardiovascular disease. In her current work she combines high-end sequencing technologies, stem cells, mouse genetics, animal models of heart disease, and molecular biology to identify important pathways for cardiac remodelling and repair and explore ways to enhance cardiac efficacy of new drugs.
Rudy is Partner at LSP, a leading European venture capital firm which manages a portfolio of 2 billion Euro and invests in healthcare companies from seed to late-stage in the fields of drug discovery, drug development, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health. Prior to joining LSP in 2012, Rudy has been Managing Director of VIB, an entrepreneurial life sciences research institute which he co-founded with Jo Bury in 1995. Rudy has also been intimately involved in the foundation of several bio-incubators and bio-accelerators, the European Association of Science and Technology Managers, and Oncode, a cancer-focused Dutch research institute. Rudy has been/is chairman/non-executive director at Ablynx (acquired by Sanofi), Actogenix (acquired by Intrexon), Multiplicom (acquired by Agilent), CropDesign (acquired by BASF), Devgen (acquired by Syngenta), Qbiologicals (acquired by Amatsi), Curetis (listed), Sequana Medical (listed), Celyad (listed) and Lumeon and is also chairman/board member of several non-profit life sciences initiatives such as EMBLEM, De Weijerhorst Stichting, Fonds Généret, and the Fonds Fournier-Majoie.
René is a professor of molecular carcinogenesis at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. His research fosuses on functional genomic approaches to find vulnerabilities in cancers that can be exploited therapeutically. His laboratory identified an effective treatment of BRAF mutant colon cancer by combining a BRAF and an EGFR inhibitor and developed MammaPrint, the first clinical-grade gene expression test for early breast cancer prognosis. Among his honors are the Pezcoller Foundation award, the Ernst Bertner Award for Cancer Research from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and the ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and of the AACR Academy.
Frank is Vice Rector for Research at Utrecht University and chair of the Utrecht University Open Science Program. He studied biochemistry at the University of Groningen, specialising in Immunology, with a minor in the Philosophy of Science. He obtained a PhD from the University of Amsterdam at the Central Laboratory of the Blood Transfusion Service (CLB), now Sanquin. From 1983, he was a Project Leader there in the immunovirology of HIV/AIDS, as part of the Amsterdam Cohort Studies. In 1996, he was appointed full professor at the AMC/University of Amsterdam and became Director of Sanquin Research in 1998. In 2004, he became head of the Immunology Department at the University Medical Center Utrecht. From January 2009 to March 2019 he was Dean and Vice Chairman of the Executive Board of the University Medical Center, Utrecht. In 2013 he was one of the founders of Science in Transition who believes that the academic incentive and reward system is in need of a fundamental reform which values science-for-science (articles in ‘high-impact’ journals) as much as the impact of science on society and aims at involving societal stakeholders more integrally in the production of knowledge.
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