Elga de Vries Group leader

Elga de Vries is a full professor at the Department of Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology. Focus of her scientific career is on the cross talk of the immune system and the brain, in particular the role of the brain vasculature, in neurological diseases. After her PhD in 1995 and a Marie-Curie Fellowship to perform a post-doctoral study at University College London, she received a VIDI grant (NWO) to start her research group. Her current research is funded through multiple grants including from the Amsterdam Neuroscience, Dutch MS Research Foundation, European Neuroscience Campus, Horizon 2020, International Society for Alzheimer research (ISAO), Marie Curie International Trainings Networks, and Zon MW (Memorabel). Within the research group, interest is in the involvement of the neurovascular unit in health and disease and how this affects neuronal function, using state-of-the art techniques.

She is member of the management team of the MS center Amsterdam (MS Centrum Amsterdam ) and the International Brain Barriers Society (https://www.ibbsoc.org).
In 2015, she founded Brendinn Therapeutics (Brain Endothelial Innovation) (www.brendinn.com), which focuses on restoring the brain endothelial dysfunction that underlies neurological diseases. Moreover, together with a number of experts in the field, she founded the Dutch network BBBNedwork (www.bbbnedwork.nl), to promote brain barrier research within the Netherlands. Her research is embedded within Amsterdam Neuroscience (Amsterdamresearch.org), the joined research institute of neuroscience Amsterdam. Recently, she has been appointed as president elect of the International Brain Barrier Society (https://www.ibbsoc.org/).

She and her team have many fruitful collaborations in the field of brain barrier research and neuroimmunology and have published over 156 papers in leading peer-reviewed journals and are internationally recognized.