Koen Raemdonck

Koen Raemdonck (Pharmacist, 2004) received his PhD at Ghent University in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Stefaan De Smedt and Prof. Jo Demeester and continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). In 2015, he was a visiting postdoctoral scientist at ETH-Zürich in the group of Prof. Jean-Christophe Leroux. Since 2016, Koen Raemdonck is professor at the Ghent Research Group on Nanomedicines (Department of Pharmaceutics, Ghent University, Belgium). He (co-)authored >90 peer-reviewed publications (H-index 35 on WoS and 42 on Google Scholar) and is inventor on 4 (pending) patents. For his research, he received several awards including the biennial National Prize of the Belgian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2011, the prize of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Belgium for scientific research in Pharmacy 2014 and the T. Nagai Postdoctoral Research Achievement award of the Controlled Release Society (CRS) in 2016. Koen is an active member of various academic societies and institutes, including board member of the Executive Council of the recently established CRS BeNeLux and France Local Chapter and group leader within the Cancer Research Institute Ghent (CRIG). The work of Prof. Raemdonck is mainly focused on exploring novel bio-inspired approaches for delivery of macromolecular therapeutics across intra-and extracellular biological barriers. His expertise includes the design and optimization of nanoformulations for RNA therapeutics and the detailed assessment of their behavior both in extracellular fluids and inside cells. Currently, his work focuses on the development of inhalable RNA formulations for treatment of pulmonary pathologies.

For his research on inhalation therapy of RNA drugs he was recently awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant (RESPIRNA, 2020).