Sanquin is responsible for safe and efficient blood supply in the Netherlands on a not-for-profit basis. Sanquin also develops and produces pharmaceutical products, conducts high-quality scientific research, and develops and performs a multitude of diagnostic services. For more information please visit their website.
Country: the Netherlands
Population Served: 17,500,000
Donors: 394,000
Ellen van der Schoot
Principal Investigator
Ellen is head of the Department of Experimental Immunohematology at Sanquin Research and Professor of Experimental Immunohematology at the University of Amsterdam. She is one of the Founding members of the Blood transfusion Genomics Consortium.
The aim of Ellen’s research is to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic options to further prevent and/or treat allo- or auto- immunisation against blood cells. Her primary focus is on studying both the antigens, which are the targets of the immune response, and the humoral immune response that leads to cell destruction. Her secondary focus is directed towards the development of molecular techniques to detect residual disease in blood and bone marrow to guide treatment in childhood cancers.
Barbera Veldhuisen
Alternate to PI
Barbera is a molecular biologist at Sanquin blood supply in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Barbera is co-lead for work package 7 for the Blood transfusion Genomics Consortium, which deals with resolution testing.
Barbera started her career with reading Biomedical Sciences at Leiden University, including research projects at the University of Edinburgh and Oxford. In 2000, she finished her PhD in human genetics at the University of Leiden (Identification of the ADPKD2 gene). After several post-doctoral positions, she started a research project at Sanquin in 2008 to develop molecular assays for blood group typing. Today, she divides her time between research and molecular diagnostics for patients. Her passion is to show the advantages of a DNA-based approach to solve complex cases and the benefits genotyping will provide to prevent allo-immunisations to blood group antigens.
Lianne Koets
Lianne is a PhD candidate at Sanquin, department of National Screening laboratory of Sanquin and department of Experimental Immunohematology. She is working on the implementation of donor genotyping into the Dutch donor screening. She obtained her MSc. degree in Microbiology at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Marco Koppelman
Marco Koppelman (1964) studied Biology with a focus on molecular cell biology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
Until 2000, he worked for Sanquin in Amsterdam on different research projects such as the development of neutralizing antibodies to HIV-1 with the phage display technique and the development of assays to detect the prion protein in human plasma. Between 2001 and 2006 he performed research for his PhD project at Sanquin: Viral safety of blood donations (molecular detection of blood transmittable viruses). He received his PhD in 2006.
In 2008, he became laboratory head of the nucleic acid testing (NAT) laboratory in the National Screening laboratory of Sanquin (NSS). In 2021 he also became the head of the blood group testing laboratory within the NSS and became involved in the BGC project. He has 44 peer reviewed publications: 8 first authorships and 36 co-authorships.