dr. Angela van Diepen

Research

I am a senior scientist working in the Glycoscience and Helminth Infection group of Ron Hokke. My research focuses on host-pathogen interactions with a special interest for helminth infections, glycosylation and host immune responses to parasite glycans and glycoproteins, with a clear focus on Schistosoma.

I study various aspects of Schistosoma infections in relation to vaccine development and the improvement and development of diagnostic tests for schistosomiasis using glycan microarrays and various glycomics techniques. I have been involved in pre-clinical studies regarding glycosylation and anti-glycan antibodies for different other helminths as well, but with a clear focus on Schistosoma.

Within our group we use several techniques to study glycosylation and anti-glycan antibody responses, including mass spectrometry, glycan microarrays, HPLC, Western blotting, parasite cultures and immunological assays to test new and improved vaccines against schistosomiasis as part of the EU funded Wormvacs2.0 project.

Curriculum vitae

I obtained my PhD at the Department of Infectious Diseases within the Leiden University Medical Center in 2005 where I studied host-pathogen interactions in the field of (Pediatric) Infectious Diseases using microbiological, immunological, transcriptomic and proteomics/mass spectrometric techniques .

This was followed by a post-doc period in the laboratory of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre where I studied the interaction between respiratory viruses and the host using mass spectrometry-based techniques.

Since 2010 I joined the group of Prof. dr. C.H. Hokke within the department of Parasitology, now called LUCID, of the Leiden University Medical Center to study various aspects of Schistosoma infections in relation to vaccine development and the improvement and development of diagnostic tests for schistosomiasis.

I am also active in the Master and Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences where I am coordinator of the Frontiers of Science course “Glycoscience - the sweet spot of infection and immunity research” and participate in other courses such as Infectious Agents & Immunity and the FOS course Pathogen Host Interactions.

I am also co-promotor of PhD students within our group.