Associate Professor
Strategic program(s):
Biography
Jo Höppener graduated (cum laude) in 1981 in Biology at Utrecht University. He did his Ph.D. (cum laude) in 1988 with Prof. Lips and Prof. Jansz (financed by NWO and Ciba Geigy). Part of the Ph.D. study was performed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, USA). He was research fellow at Utrecht University until 1989 (financed by STW), when he was awarded a 5-year fellowship from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He was appointed senior research scientist in the Faculty of Medicine (presently UMC Utrecht) at the Division of Internal Medicine in 1994. He was appointed Associate Professor at the Division of Biomedical Genetics at UMC Utrecht in 2005 and his research was incorporated in the Laboratory of Translational Immunology in 2013. The major research theme of his group is the role of IAPP and islet amyloid in islet ß-cell dysfunction in Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2). To this end they have generated a transgenic mouse model, in which the amyloidogenic human IAPP is expressed in the islet ß-cells. This unique animal model is used for pioneering research on the pathogenesis, diagnosis and therapy of DM2.
