Josine van Beek (1975) is scientist at the department the department Immune mechanisms – Correlates of protection (IMC) within the Center for Immunology of Infectious diseases and Vaccines (IIV).  She is interested in the role for T cells induced by natural infection or vaccination in the protection against respiratory viral infections. Her focus is on immune responses to influenza virus infection, but also other viruses that cause Influenza-like Illness (ILI) belong to her interests. Josine is involved in several clinical trials in which different human samples are collected for our research projects (ILI-studies; VITAL). The impact of ageing is an important theme that is taken along in the evaluation of the results.

Projects

  1. Identification of potential pathogens responsible for influenza-like illness and evaluation of humoral and cellular immunity against identified microorganisms in elderly in The Netherlands. (ILI-studies)
  2. Responses to influenza and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in older adults compared to middle-aged adults and adults as part of the VITAL (The Vaccines and InfecTious diseases in the Ageing popuLation) consortium. 

Expertise

  • Cellular immunity
  • Respiratory viral infection

Key publications

Links

Google Scholar: ‪Josine van Beek‬ - ‪Google Scholar‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
ResearchGate: www.researchgate.net/profile/Josine-Van-Beek

Background

Josine graduated  as medical biologist in 1999 at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. In 2005 she obtained her PhD at the same university after defending her thesis ‘EBV-bearing gastric carcinomas: expression patterns, pathogenesis and clinical features’. Next, she wordked as Postdoc for 5 years at Sanquin Blood Supply on the role for CD4+ T-cells in the humoral immune response to therapeutical proteins and on the development of new HLA- class II multimer concepts. She works at Utrecht Science Park-Bilthoven since 2009. First as Postdoc at the Netherlands Vaccine Institute (NVI) and currently as scientist at Center for Immunology of Infectious diseases and Vaccines, Centre for Infectious Disease Control (CIb).

Contact

E-mail: info@rivm.nl