Eelco de Koning

Eelco de Koning (1963) received his medical doctorate in 1991 and subsequently moved to England to research islet biology and pathology at the Diabetes Research Laboratories in Oxford under the supervision of Anne Clark and Robert Turner. He completed his Ph.D. in 1994, supported by a MRC Training Fellowship. In the same year, he began his training in Internal Medicine, followed by a fellowship in Endocrinology at the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU), becoming board certified in endocrinology in 2001. He joined Ton Rabelink's research group at UMCU, focusing on complications related to diabetes mellitus. A Career Development Grant from the Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation and a transfer to Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in 2004 enabled him to establish a clinical islet transplantation program. He also obtained a fellowship from the Joslin Diabetes Center (Harvard Medical School) in Boston, where he gained expertise in clinical beta-cell therapy and initiated a research program on human islet (progenitor) biology from 2004 to 2005. Returning to LUMC in 2006, he established a laboratory for human islet isolation under GMP conditions and became the director of the clinical islet transplantation program, which has been operational since 2007. Utilizing a bench-to-bedside approach, he has initiated and leads multicenter research programs aimed at improving islet transplantation and exploring the use of islet progenitor cells in beta-cell therapy. In 2010, he became a group leader at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht and has been a Professor of Diabetology by special appointment at Leiden University since November 2011.