Dr. Johannes van der Loo is the Director of the Clinical Vector Core at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. van der Loo obtained his Ph.D. from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1995 based on his work on the identification and characterization of the hematopoietic stem cell. He completed a 4-year post-doctoral fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Indiana University Wells Center for Pediatric Research and served as junior faculty the faculty at the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute with a focus on stem cells and gene therapy.
In 2002, Dr. van der Loo was recruited to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to build a facility and a team dedicated to the manufacturing of viral vectors for early phase clinical trials, in compliance with current Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). His accomplishments include the development of large-scale manufacturing processes for clinical-grade gamma-retroviral and lentiviral vectors with self-inactivating long terminal repeats and adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors using transfection-based technologies, and manufacturing and qualification of GMP-grade clinical vectors on all three platforms.
Dr. van der Loo was recruited by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2015 where he expanded the program, scope, and portfolio of the Clinical Vector Core, coordinated the design, construction, commissioning, and qualification of a state-of-the art US FDA and EU-compliant cleanroom facility which achieved an award from the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering in 2021.
In his current role, he is responsible for the manufacturing of AAV and lentiviral vectors for pre-clinical pharmacology/toxicology studies and for clinical use. Vectors manufactured have been used by investigators in academia, industry, and government, in support of pre-clinical and clinical studies nationally and internationally in 10 countries. In 2022, Dr. van der Loo joined Vibalogics as a Scientific Advisory Board Member.
