Management

Katleen Verleysen (CEO) was, prior to joining Pronota, one of the founding scientists and Group Leader of the Analytical Department of Serenex, Inc. , a US-based biotech company acquired by Pfizer in 2008. She is board member at the Center for Medical Innovation (CMI). Katleen holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Ghent. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical Center of Duke University (Durham, NC) in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, where she was responsible for the set up of a Proteomics Core Facility.

Griet Vanpoucke (Director research and development) trained as a molecular biologist and holds a PhD from Ghent University where she studied the role of cell adhesion molecules in cancer progression. Following her PhD she moved to the UK for a postdoctoral position. She obtained a career development fellowship from the MRC to study the role of the micro-environment on normal and tumor prostate development. Following this three year postdoctoral position, she joined Pronota in 2006, where she has managed several internal and external biomarker discovery programs. In her current position she is responsible for all R&D activities within Pronota.

Wouter Laroy (Head of operations and technology development) was previously a project leader at VIB (Zwijnaarde, Belgium) where he developed technologies for protein glycosylation profiling and its application in biomarker research. Wouter Holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry, an M.Sc in Biotechnology and a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Ghent University. As a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Baltimore, US), he studied the possible involvement of glycolipids in different human pathologies. Wouter joined Pronota in 2006 where he first developed the MASSterclass protein validation engine and then applied it in the validation of Pronota’s lead diagnostic product candidates.

Grégoire Thomas (Principle investigator) After completing a PhD in the UK, Grégoire Thomas joined a private reseach company in Belgium to develop data mining methods for microarray data. He then joined the group of Professor Joël Vandekerckhove at the University of Ghent to explore the potential of the high-throughput protein profiling platform that they were then developing. In 2005, Grégoire Thomas joined Pronota to contribute to the development of its MASStermind^® protein biomarker discovery platform. He then engineered data analysis pipelines for Pronota’s different analytical platforms. He is now in charge of statistical analysis and data mining for Pronota’s diagnostic discovery and verification projects.