John Haanen

Biography

John Haanen studied medicine at the University of Leiden and did his PhD in the lab of Rene de Vries and Jon van Rood at the department of immunohematology and blood bank of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden, The Netherlands.

Research Interest

During his PhD studies he collaborated closely with Hergen Spits and was the first to show that Th1 cells occur in humans as well (Mycobacterium-specific CD4+ T cells). He was at DNAX, research institute, Palo Alto, CA at the time IL-10 was being discovered and participated in the early functional IL-10 studies. After his thesis defense in 1991, John Haanen was trained in internal medicine. After becoming internist at the LUMC, John Haanen joined the NKI as a post-doctoral fellow (1997-1999) and worked together with Ada Kruisbeek, Hergen Spits and Ton Schumacher in the lab. With Ton he worked on influenza specific CD8+ T-cells using MHC multimers. After his post-doc John Haanen was trained in medical oncology and received a permanent position at the NKI-AVL in 2001, when he started his own research group in the NKI next to his clinical work.