Gerry studied chemistry from 1987 till 1993 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, where he specialised in Biochemistry. In 1997 he received his PhD from the Faculty of Medicine of the Maastricht University , which was awarded a “cum laude” distinction. The title of his thesis was “Regulation of Thrombin Formation in Normal and Hypercoagulable States”. The thesiswork, supervised by Prof. Coen Hemker, Dr. Jan Rosing and Dr. Guido Tans embodied a combination of biochemistry, enzyme kinetics and clinical chemistry, studying coagulation proteins both in isolated form as in their “natural” plasma environment, and included population-based studies. A detailed description of the molecular explanation of APC resistance and of the acquired APC resistance in oral contraceptives users formed a main theme of the thesis.
After a short prolongation of the thesis work on the prothrombotic effects of oral contraceptives till early 1998, which received worldwide attention, he accepted a postdoctoral position at the Wallenberg Laboratory, University of Lund, Sweden in the group of Prof. Bjorn Dahlbäck. Here he focused on recombinant DNA technology and was introduced to structural bioinformatics.
From late 2000 till present, he continued research on structure-function and drug discovery & design studies at the Biochemistry Department of CARIM after being granted a project grant and a successive VIDI grant to start an own research line, by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
His current research interest is translational molecular medicine in the fields of coagulation, haemostasis, immunothrombosis, atherosclerosis and inflammation, with an emphasis on structure-based discovery and design, with a special interest in NETosis, citrullination, DAMPs and extracellular histones.
Gerry published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles, supervised 14 doctorate candidates and is inventor of several granted patent applications.
He is CSO at Matisse Pharmaceuticals BV.
