Partner Description
The University of Twente is a public technical research university located in Enschede, The Netherlands. The University of Twente hosts research institutes in the domains of nanotechnology, biomedical engineering, and digital society. Microphysiological systems and organs-on-chips are a key research theme in the university.
Dr. Andries D. van der Meer is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Twente. He heads an organ-on-chip research group in the Applied Stem Cell Technologies department of the Faculty of Science and Technology, supervising six Ph.D. candidates and coordinating multiple research projects on the development of blood vessels-on-chips as well as their integration in full organ-on-chip systems like the retina-on-chip, lung-on-chip and heart-on-chip.
From 2013 to 2015, Dr. Van der Meer worked as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. He actively developed organ-on-chip models of the blood-brain barrier and the alveolus for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Microphysiological Systems program and coordinated a collaborative project between the Wyss Institute organ-on-chip start-up company Emulate, Inc. and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Before joining Harvard University, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Prof. Albert van den Berg’s BIOS/Lab-on-a-Chip group of the University of Twente, The Netherlands. During that time, he also served as an Assistant Coordinator for the project ‘Beyond Borders: Organs-on-Chips’ of the Dutch Royal Academy (KNAW). This project led to the founding of the Dutch Human Organ and Disease Model Technologies (hDMT) Organ-on-Chip consortium, for which Dr. Van der Meer is his university’s representative.
Role within Project
- Evaluating mechanisms of immune therapy-related toxicities by using microphysiological systems, with a focus on vascular toxicity
- Technical development of multi-organ microphysiological systems with an active circulatory system