Clemens A. van Blitterswijk is a Dutch scientist in tissue engineering, a field that aims to replace or regenerate diseased or damaged tissues through a combination of biology and engineering. He has contributed to the use of synthetic biomaterials to heal bone injuries, especially to an approach termed osteoinduction that aims at designing biomaterials that trigger the surrounding cells to form new bone tissuein vivo. One example of this contribution to osteoinduction is a paper published in collaboration with and . Following other laboratories, and in collaboration with , , and others, he has contributed to applying high-throughput screens to select biomaterials, an approach termed materiomics. The scientific publications that include him as an author can be found .
Career
van Blitterswijk graduated from a bachelor in cell biology at Leiden University. He defended his PhD thesis in 1985 at the same university on artificial ceramic middle ear implants under the supervision of and Klaas De Groot, for which he was awarded the Jean Leray young scientist award from the European Society for Biomaterials in 1987. From 1985 to 1996, he worked on hydroxyapatite biomaterials for middle ear implants under the mentorship of and Klaas De Groot at Leiden University. In 1996, he left Leiden University and co-founded, along with Klaas De Groot, IsoTis, a former publicly traded life sciences company. He acted as a CEO of IsoTis from 1996 to 2002. In 2003, at the age of 46, he became a full professor at University of Twente. Between 2008 and 2014, he participated to the foundation and directed the former MIRA institute that became part of the At Twente University, through a collaboration with , , and others, he contributed to the development of high-throughput approaches to select micrometer-scale surface textures of biomaterials aimed at enhancing specific cellular functions, which resulted in the TopoChip. In 2012, in parallel to his positions at Twente University, he became a partner of the private investment firm. His prime focus and responsibility within LSP is to invest in private companies. In 2014, he left Twente University to become a distinguished professor at Maastricht University, while maintaining his activities at . Between 2014 and 2018, he acted as the director and department chair at the at Maastricht University. In 2015, he was awarded an ERC Advanced grant that aimed at developing microfabricated and microfluidic cell culture platforms for improving mouse organoids reflective of the pancreatic islet, the pituitary gland, and the embryo. Due to his management positions at Maastricht University and at , the conception of this grant application and the research relative to it was done by several other principal investigators at the . In 2017, he was part of a consortium led by Carlijn Bouten that received a NWO Gravitation grant to develop materials-driven approaches for tissue regeneration. In 2017, he became a member of the board of , a Swiss biotechnology company founded by and focused on bone healing. In 2018, became the chairman of this company. In 2018 he contributed to the foundation of an international consortium named ) that aims to bring multiple cures for chronic diseases to market in the next ten years. He is a fellow of the . He has been a member of the since 2003, the since 2012, and the since 2016. He is listed as being part of the editorial board of the .
Valorization
Since the 1990s, he has focused on translating technologies to commercial products. He is registered as a contributor to 34 patents. He has also contributed to several companies and served as CEO of IsoTis from 1996 to 2002. IsoTis subsequently suffered heavy financial losses and was on the verge of bankruptcy before merging with Integra LifeSciences. He became the chairman of Kuros in June 2018. He has been named the most entrepreneurial scientist in the Netherlands in 2012 and receiving the Huibregtsen award for ground-breaking science with societal impact in 2015. He is a partner of the Health Economics Funds of the European health care investment group Life Sciences Partners, a healthcare investment firms in Europe. The two HEF funds have raised close to €400 million for technologies that aim at improving the quality of health care while lowering the cost of it, focused specifically on medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health. HEF2, at €280 million, is currently one of the largest fund in Europe dedicated to medical technology.
Teaching
Over his 30-year career, he has been the official supervisor of over 70 PhD candidates who worked in their large majority as researchers in the laboratories of several principal investigators at the universities of Twente and Maastricht. He has participated to the edition of four textbooks, including one dedicated to tissue engineering.
