Press release
Wageningen University appoints Special Professor of Bioconjugate Chemistry
Wageningen University has appointed Dr Floris van Delft to the post of Special Professor of Bioconjugate Chemistry with effect from 1 June 2015. The chair is part of the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry.
Dr Floris van Delft (1968) studied chemistry in Leiden, where he obtained his doctoral degree (cum laude) in 1996 for method optimisation and the application of sugars as chiral building blocks. From 1999 to 2013, van Delft was employed by Radboud University Nijmegen, first as an assistant and later as an associate professor. He was awarded a VIDI grant in 2000 and has various patents to his name. Van Delft was also one of the co-founders of the spin-off company SynAffix in 2010. Dr van Delft’s appointment is for one day a week and is funded by SynAffix.
In Wageningen, van Delft will focus on research into chemical reactions in water, with applications for the selective modification of biomolecules. An example is the conjugation of a toxin to an antibody for use in selective cancer therapy, which enables toxins to reach tumour cells without damaging healthy cells.