Tilman Hackeng

Professor

Prof. Tilman Hackeng studied biochemistry at the University of Utrecht and obtained his PhD at the same University in 1993 on protein C/protein S anticoagulant mechanisms. Shortly after, he left for The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA, were he worked on translational chemistry in the laboratories of Molecular and Experimental Medicine and Cell Biology.

In 1998, he returned to the Netherlands as a Research Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at the Department of Biochemistry of the University Maastricht. He is past president of the Netherlands Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis (NVTH), and elected member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW). In addition, he is chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Netherlands Thrombosis Foundation, acts as reviewer for major journals in the Thrombosis & Haemostasis and Chemistry fields and serves on grant reviewing boards of national and international granting agencies. Currently he is chairman of the Department of Biochemistry of the University Maastricht and Scientific Director of CARIM. He is co-founder of ACS Biomarker BV and Coagulation Profile BV.

His research on chemistry and structure function relationships of blood coagulation proteins explores the involvement of blood coagulation proteins in developing cardiovascular disease. With an emphasis on anticoagulant regulatory pathways, a multidisciplinary approach is used in unraveling functional properties of proteins involved in the regulation of thrombin formation. Functional impairments of coagulation proteins can lead to development of venous and arterial thrombosis, and a fundamental understanding of inter-protein and protein-vessel wall interactions is a prerequisite for understanding how anticoagulant proteins work in preventing thrombosis. A broad technology platform is applied to this programme, from automated thrombin generation, total chemical synthesis of proteins, to NMR protein structural analysis and development of clinical assays. Additional research programmes performed in his laboratory for total chemical protein synthesis comprise several research lines and collaborations in the field of haemostasis and thrombosis, cancer, targeted molecular imaging and synthetic vaccines. Multimodal and multivalent constructs are applied as molecular imaging agents in vitro and in vivo for the targeting and MRI, SPECT, and PET imaging of thrombosis, atherosclerosis and angiogenesis and further developed within Maastricht Imaging Valley under the evolving discipline of translational cardiovascular chemistry.