Dr. Ir. J. (Jeroen) Corver

After my obtaining my MSc in Plant pathology at the University of Wageningen (1993), I did my PhD at the University of Groningen on Membrane fusion activity of Semliki forest virus, supervised by Prof. Dr. Jan Wilschut. During my PhD, I spent some time at the ETH in Zürich. In 1998, I moved to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), to work as a postdoc on flaviviruses replication and assembly under supervision of Prof. Dr. James Strauss and collaborated with Profs Michael Rossmann and Richard Kuhn at Purdue University. Upon my return to the Netherlands in 2002, I started working in the LUMC on the spike proteins of hepatitis C virus and SARS coronavirus, in the group led by Prof. Dr. Willy Spaan. In 2008 I shifted towards bacteria, by working on the gut pathogen Clostridioides difficile, in the group of Prof. Dr. Ed Kuijper. In collaboration with Dr. Paul Hensbergen at the Center for proteomics and Metabolomics at the LUMC I now mainly work on C. difficile proteases and their role in the regulation of motility and stress response of this notorious pathogen.

My curiosity about pathogens and molecular biology started in high school. During biology lessons, we learned about bacteriophages and DNA. I wanted to know more about this and decided to move to Wageningen University and study plant pathology, specializing on molecular virology. This period made me decide to do a PhD in virology in Groningen. During my PhD, I learned about membrane fusion, biochemistry, biophysics and virology. I continued to work on flaviviruses at Caltech. Next, I worked on Hepatitis C virus and SARS coronavirus in the LUMC, mainly on spike proteins. Then I switched to molecular bacteriology. I work on molecular mechanisms in Clostridioides difficile, which includes the mode of action of a presumed inhibitor of toxin production, biomarkers and typing, rapid diagnosis methods, stress response and motility. I focus on the molecular mechanisms of proteases and try to use this information to identify novel targets for intervention and diagnosis. Common theme in all my work is: how do pathogens work? What molecular mechanisms determine a successful life cycle?