Dr. Jan ter Meulen (MD, DTM&H, board certified medical microbiologist) worked mainly on the epidemiology and immunology of tropical virus infections, in particular Lassa fever, before joining the biotech company Crucell as Director Infectious Diseases. In this function he is involved in the development and production of vaccines against Ebola, Lassa and Marburg viruses and heads the SARS-CoV program of the company. He has more than 10 years of experience working in BSL4 and BSL3 containment facilities at the Bernhard Nocht Institute, Hamburg, and the Institute of Virology, Marburg. In 2000 he was appointed for 5 years as an International Research Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to conduct studies on the T-cell immunity against Lassa fever virus in Guinea and is acting coordinator of an INCO-DEV program (FFP5) on viral hemorrhagic fevers in West Africa. Dr. ter Meulen holds an academic appointment at the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, and is associate editor of the Journal of Clinical Virology.

Dr. J. Goudsmit (MD, PhD, medical microbiologist) is Executive Vice President Research & Development and chief scientific officer (CSO) of Crucell and Professor of poverty-related communicable diseases at the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam. Dr. Goudsmit is acknowledged as a world expert in the field of HIV immunology and vaccinology and has an extensive publication record in this field. He is a member of the board of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

The Dutch Biotech company Crucell B.V. targets infectious diseases through its proprietary technologies to generate fully human recombinant antibodies and replication deficient recombinant adenoviruses in the immortalized human cell line PER.C6TM, for which a biological master file has been posted with the FDA. The company has more than 30 licensees, with several recombinant antibodies and vaccines produced on the PER.C6TM platform in clinical phase I and II studies. The company’s proprietary technology MAbstractTM allows rapid selection of single-chain antibodies from synthetic or immune phage-antibody libraries, which are routinely converted into fully human antibody-molecules (IgG, IgA or IgM) and have been expressed as stable clones in PER.C6TM cells at approx. 1g/liter.

Selected publications of Partner 4:

Lenz O., ter Meulen J., Klenk H.D., Seidah N.G., and Garten W. 2001. The Lassa virus glycoprotein precursor GP-C is proteolytically processed by subtilase SKI-1/S1P. Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA. 98:12701-12705.
ter Meulen J. 2000. Response to haemorrhagic fevers in Europe. Lancet, end-of-year suppl. 356:64.
ter Meulen J., Badusche M., Kuhnt K., Doetze A., Satoguina J., Marti T., Loeliger C., Koulemou K., Koivogui L., Schmitz H., Fleischer B., and Hoerauf A. 2000. Characterisation of human CD4+ T-cell clones recognising conserved and variable epitopes of the Lassa virus nucleoprotein. J.Virol. 74:2186-2192.
Kuiken C.L., Zwart G., Baan E., Coutinho R.A., van den Hoek J.A.R., and Goudsmit J. 1993. Increasing antigenic and genetic diversity of the V3 variable domain of the human immunodeficiency virus envelope protein in the course of the AIDS epidemic. PNAS USA 90:9061-9065.
Goudsmit J., Debouck C., Meloen R.H., Smit L., Bakker M., Asher D.M., Wolff A.V., Gibbs jr. C.J., and Gajdusek D.C. 1988. HIV-1 neutralisation epitope with conserved architecture elicits early type-specific antibodies in experimentally infected chimpanzees. PNAS USA 85:4478-4482.

Dr. J. ter Meulen
j.termeulen@crucell.com