Prof. Frits Koning is an Emeritus Professor of Immunology, specializing in the Protein Chemical Aspects of Immune-mediated Diseases at the Department of Immunology, Leiden University Medical Center. He serves as the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the LUMC and is a member of the Biomedical Sciences Program committee. In 1993, Prof. Koning was awarded a prestigious PIONIER grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. He directed the Celiac Disease Consortium from 2004 to 2014, which received an EUR 11.7 million grant
from the Dutch Government. His primary research interest lies in gastrointestinal disorders such as celiac disease, Crohn's disease, and
ulcerative colitis.
Dr. Padmini Khedoe is a senior researcher at the PulmoScience Laboratory at the department of Pulmonology in the Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands. She has an interest in immunology and regenerative medicine and works on disease mechanisms and impaired repair in emphysema in COPD and alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency. She also works on translational studies in patients with severe lung damage and treatment options with mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC). Furthermore, she studies immune and structural cell profiles of emphysema patients using spatial and single-cell technologies and the development of new novel treatment strategies using primary cell culture models.
