UTRECHT UNIVERSITY, PROFESSOR, PI AND HEAD OF IMMUNOGLOBULIN RESEARCHAT SANQUIN RESEARCH

Prof. Dr. Vidarsson is a principal investigator at the Department of Experimental Immunohematology, head of Immunoglobulin Research laboratory at Sanquin Research and a professor of Immunoglobulin biopharmaceutics at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Utrecht University. He holds a BSc in molecular biology and an MSc in Immunology from the University of Iceland, and obtained his doctorate from the Department of Immunology, University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) in 2000He completed postdoctoral fellowships at UMCU’s Eijkman Graduate School for Immunology and Infectious Diseases; the Vaccine Research Laboratory at the Netherlands Vaccine Institute, Bilthoven; and the Department of Experimental Immunohematology, Sanquin Research and Landsteiner Laboratory.
His focuses on humoral Immune responses emphasizing on antibody biology in humans. This includes work on Fc-receptors, complement and antibody glycosylation where study its significance in human immune responses. To do this we use antigen-specific IgG glycosylation analysis and glycoengineering, in conjunction single cell B cell techniques. We are also actively putting these tools for diagnostic purposes in antibody testing in pregnancy and for therapeutic purposes.
According to Google scholar, his work has been cited >12,000 times yielding a h-index of 55, with 127 papers cited more than 10 times in the last 5 years. He received a European Community Biotechnology program grant enabling his own PhD project, has among other intramural Sanquin grants, been awarded six times with grants from the “Landsteiner Stichting voor Bloedtransfusie Research” (LSBR) (~2.5M€) and was a co-applicant for an NWO Investment subsidy in 2012 (0.47 M€), co-applicant for as Dutch Cancer research grant (KWF 0.55 M€) and a lead applicant for a COVID-19 grant from the Dutch ZonMW funding scheme (0.42 M€). His work has led to several collaborations with biopharma and currently has three post doc and one PhD student financed through his connections with Genmab (Netherlands) and argenx (Belgium). He has supervised 13 PhD students successfully completing their defense, three are awaiting to defend their thesis, and is currently (co) supervising 6 PhD students), 3 technicians and two post docs.