About

Johan Neyts is full professor of Virology at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium. He teaches virology at the medical school and at the school of dentistry. His laboratory www.antivirals.be has a long-standing expertise in the development of antivirals strategies and drugs against emerging and neglected viral infections such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya and other alphaviruses, enteroviruses, noroviruses, HEV and rabies and is as well intensively involved in the development of antiviral strategies against SARS-CoV2. An ultrapotent pan-serotype dengue inhibitor developed in his laboratory and at the Centre for Drug Design & Development (www.cd3.be) is currently in clinical development at Janssen Pharmaceutica (J&J) and efficacy has recently been shown in dengue infected humans. A second focus is on the development of the PLLAV (Plasmid Launched Live Attenuated Virus) vaccine technology, which is based on the yellow fever virus vaccine as a vector. It allows to rapidly engineer highly thermostable vaccines against multiple viral pathogens. Johan is a past-president of the International Society for Antiviral Research. He is the co-founder of KU Leuven spin-off companies AstriVax www.astrivax.com and Okapi Sciences. He is responsible for the Belgian VirusBank platform www.virusbankplatform.be an investment of the Belgian Federal Government in epidemic/pandemic preparedness. He published >640 papers in peer reviewed journals and received multiple national and international awards. He has given ~340 invited lectures and hundreds of interviews to lay-press.

For more information: Twitter: @neyts_johan

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