Leo A. B. Joosten

In August 2014, Leo A. B. Joosten, PhD, world-renowned KOL in the field of degenerative and inflammatory arthritis, joined Olatec’s Drug Development Team and joined Olatec’s Scientific Advisory Board in September 2015. For Olatec, Dr. Joosten is collaborating with Dr. Dinarello on in vitro, in vivo and ex vivo studies that target specific cytokines to better understand the MOA of dapansutrile and the OLT Analogues. Dr. Joosten is Professor of Mechanisms of Inflammatory Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, at Radboud University in the Netherlands where he is also head of the Research Laboratory of Experimental Medicine. In addition, he is a visiting professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. During the past five years, his research has focused on the role of cytokines in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammation and was aimed to find novel inhibitors to treat patients with these inflammatory diseases. His research group demonstrated for the first time that the novel cytokine IL-32 is an important pro-inflammatory mediator in arthritis and has investigated the function of the protein complex called the “inflammasome” in gouty arthritis and Lyme disease. Dr. Joosten’s recent research is focused on gout and uric acid. He has published over 400 original research articles in the areas of rheumatology, infectious diseases, immunology and endocrinology and metabolism. In 2008, the article of Joosten LAB et al. “Anticytokine treatment of established type II collagen-induced arthritis in DBA/1 mice: A comparative study using anti-TNF alpha, anti-IL-1alpha/beta, and IL1-Ra”. Arthritis Rheum 1996;39:797-809” was selected as one of the ten best articles of the last fifty years for the 50th anniversary of the Arthritis & Rheumatism journal. Dr. Joosten holds several patents including US 61/890,354: Gout diagnosis in whole blood samples (2013). He is board member of the following committees: selection committee of the Radboud UMC PhD competition; European Gout consortium (EuroGout); and scientific committee of the first international Crystal Network Meeting in Paris. Dr. Joosten holds Master’s degrees from HMLS, Oss, Netherlands and HAN, Nijmegen, Netherlands. He was awarded a doctorate degree from Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands in 1999 with his thesis titled “Targeting of cytokines in experimental arthritis.”