Jan Steyaert

Jan Steyaert, ir., Ph.D., is professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is currently director of the Structural Biology Brussels lab (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Deputy-Director of the Structural Biology Research Center of VIB. Jan has been instrumental in the foundation of Ablynx and AgroSavfe, two VIB-VUB biotech spin-offs that valorize a unique family of camelid single domain antibodies.

Jan pioneered the use of ConfoBodies (sdAbs) in structural biology. The elucidation of the first GPCR structures in the agonist-bound active state, solved in collaboration with the Kobilka lab (Stanford University), demonstrated the power of ConfoBodies to lock drug targets in inherent instable functional states. Recent work focussed on exploiting the conformational complexity of therapeutic targets for ConfoBody™ enabled drug discovery.