Geert D’Haens

Dr. Geert D'Haens is a Professor of Gastroenterology at Amsterdam University Medical Centers, where he leads the IBD Unit. Currently, Dr. D’Haens leads a group of more than 50 IBD researchers at Amsterdam UMC. He is also Medical Director of Alimentiv BV, an IBD-dedicated CRO in Europe, and former chairman of IOIBD, the international organization for the study of IBD. After graduation at the University of Leuven, Belgium, he was trained in gastroenterology, gastrointestinal endoscopy, and inflammatory bowel diseases at the University Hospitals in Leuven and at the University of Chicago Hospitals under the mentorship of Paul Rutgeerts and Steven Hanauer, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. thesis in 1996 on mechanisms causing postoperative recurrence of Crohn’s disease. After that, most of his research efforts went into the mechanism of action of new IBD drugs, the development of endoscopic endpoints and surrogate markers for IBD, and the effect of early intervention with anti-TNF. In 1999, he co-founded ECCO, the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organization. He has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed articles so far and participates in many drug development programs and clinical trials for IBD.