Dr. THEO VAN DEN BROEK
 
 
First Name
THEO
Last Name
VAN DEN BROEK
University/Institution
Boston Children's Hospital / Harvard Medical School
Email ID
theodorus.vandenbroek@childrens.harvard.edu
City
Boston
Country
United States
State
Massachusetts
Zip code
02116
Department
Co-Founder, JoLS
Area of Research
Immunology
Area of Expertise
T cells
Brief Description of Research Interest:
 

My long term research interests involve the development of a comprehensive understanding on the role of T cells in the initiation and maintenance of human and experimental autoreactivity.

As a Fulbright scholar in the USA, I focused on distilling the mechanisms of epitope-specific immune therapy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). As a predoctoral student, in the Netherlands, my research focused on the dynamics of T cell reconstitution in children thymectomized within their first month of life and after stem cell transplantation for autoimmune diseases in humans and murine models. My findings identified a novel functional marker for recent thymic emigrants and significantly altered the concept of naïve T cells as developmentally synchronized and relatively homogeneous cell population and incited the need for a revision. The necessity of T cell help for the development of human B cell autoreactivity was further investigated in close collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Science. Overall, this has skilled me in several clinical autoimmune diseases as well as techniques in cellular immunology in humans and mice.

My current research (supported by a Marie Curie Global Fellowship) builds logically on my prior work on the specific role of T cells in the development of B cell autoreactivity.

 
Representative Publications:
 
The full spectrum of human naïve T cells.

van den Broek T, Delemarre EM, Janssen WJ, Nievelstein RA, Broen JC, Tesselaar K, Borghans JA, Nieuwenhuis EE, Prakken BJ, Mokry M, Jansen NJ, van Wijk F.
Neonatal thymectomy reveals differentiation and plasticity within human naive T cells.
J Clin Invest. 2016 Mar 1;126(3):1126-36. doi: 10.1172/JCI84997. PubMed PMID: 26901814; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4767338.

Delemarre EM*, van den Broek T*, Mijnheer G, Meerding J, Wehrens EJ, Olek S, Boes M, van Herwijnen MJ, Broere F, van Royen A, Wulffraat NM, Prakken BJ, Spierings E, van Wijk F. (*contributed equally)
Autologous stem cell transplantation aids autoimmune patients by functional renewal and TCR diversification of regulatory T cells.
Blood. 2016 Jan 7;127(1):91-101. doi: 10.1182/blood-2015-06-649145
. PubMed PMID: 26480932.
van den Broek T, Hoppenreijs E, Meerding J, Scholman R, Otten HG, Swart JF, Martini A, Prakken B, de Jager W.
Cytokine profiling at disease onset: support for classification of young antinuclear antibody-positive patients as a separate category of juvenile idiopathic arthritis.
Ann Rheum Dis. 2015 Feb;74(2):470-2. doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-206424. PubMed PMID: 25384964.

Schadenberg AW, van den Broek T, Siemelink MA, Algra SO, de Jong PR, Jansen NJ, Prakken BJ, van Wijk F.
Differential homeostatic dynamics of human regulatory T-cell subsets following neonatal thymectomy.
J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2014 Jan; 133(1): 277-80.e1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2013.08.030. PubMed PMID: 24139831.