stefaan de koker | VP technology and innovation
etherna

Stefaan De Koker holds a master in Bio-engineering and obtained his PhD at the lab for Molecular Immunology at Ghent University. Throughout his career, Stefaan has had a keen interest in understanding how activation of the innate immune system shapes the adaptive immune system and in translating this knowledge into improved vaccines and immunotherapies. Stefaan became early involved in the mRNA therapeutics field and published seminal papers on the mode-of-action of mRNA vaccines, on the usage of mRNA for intratumoral immunomodulation and on the development of novel delivery vehicles for mRNA therapeutics. September 2016, Stefaan joined etherna where he leads the Technology and Innovation team. His focus is currently on the design of customized mRNA lipid- based nanoparticles (cLNPs) for extrahepatic delivery, immunomodulation and gene editing.  Stefaan has authored over 60 publications and is co-inventor on >15 patent applications