Sander van Kasteren
Leiden University
Biography
Sander van Kasteren (Roosendaal 1978) trained as an organic chemist in Edinburgh. He performed his PhD research under the tutelage of Prof Benjamin G. Davis in Oxford, where he worked on carbohydrate total synthesis and its application to the development of MRI- and histological probes to detect early brain inflammation.
Later, he participated in the lab of Prof. Colin Watts at the University of Dundee. He worked on the development of protease inhibitors to improve antigen cross-presentation in dendritic cells. A second postdoctoral position in the groups of Huib Ovaa brought him back to the Netherlands. In this lab, he continued his development in the field of chemical immunology and worked on the development of highly selective deubiquitinase inhibitors.
In 2012, he started his group at Leiden University. In 2014, he joined the Institute of Chemical Immunology as a board member, and in 2018 was promoted to Associate Professor. Finally, in 2021, Prof van Kasteren was promoted to full Professor. For his work, he has received the Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship, an NWO-Veni fellowship, two ERC Grants (Starting/Consolidator), and funding from the Reumafonds and MS Motion. In 2012, he was awarded the 2012 Early Career Investigator Award by the British Biochemical Society.
RSC affiliations
Editorial board, RSC Chemical Biology