Prof. johan Garssen

Dr. Johan Garssen studied medicine and biology at the Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He specialized in immunology, pharmacology and biochemistry and finished both studies in 1987 cum laude. He finished his PhD thesis at the University of Utrecht in 1991 on the role of T cells in respiratory allergy, an immunopharmacological approach. This PhD program was partly performed at Yale University, New Haven, USA. After a postdoc period, he became a senior scientist at the National Institute of Public Health in the Netherlands. There he coached many research projects, both preclinical as well as clinical research, in the field of immunomodulation induced by a.o. nutritional ingredients, drugs and environmental agents. In 2002 he became head of the section of immunology at Numico-Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands. Since October 2008 he has become director of the immunology platform of Danone, division for specialized nutrition (medical nutrition and infant nutrition). Since 2022, he has served as Chief Scientific Advisor Nutricia Danone Research. In addition, since 2005, he has been a program leader and since 2007 full professor of “immunopharmacology” at the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences. As of 2022, he is chair of the future food utrecht research hub/community.