Matthijs Bekkers is an early career researcher and has extensive research experience in drug discovery for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

His PhD focussed on the role of the microbiome and its activity in diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Here, he further developed the use of patient derived organoids, that are grown in the lab as ‘mini-guts’ and used these to test novel microbiota molecules.

With this organoid platform he identified a molecule with an effect on IBD features such wound repair and intestinal permeability. Before he commenced research, Matthijs gained relevant industry experience on the manufacturing of IBD therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies.