University of Groningen (RUG)

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Geert van den Bogaart (Coordinator)

Department of Molecular Immunology and Microbiology
g.van.den.bogaart at rug.nl
University of Groningen
Groningen Biomolecular Sciences & Biotechnology Institute (GBB)
P.O.Box 9101, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands
Nijenborgh 7


ORCID: 0000-0003-2180-6735
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Geert van den Bogaart earned his biology degree in 2004 and completed his PhD in biochemistry in 2008, both from the University of Groningen. Following his doctoral studies, he pursued postdoctoral research in neurobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. In 2012, he established his own research group in immunology at the Department of Tumor Immunology, Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Netherlands. In 2018, he was appointed full professor of Molecular Immunology at the University of Groningen.

His research group operates at the crossroads of chemistry, microscopy, and immunology, with the aim of understanding and manipulating membrane trafficking pathways in immune cells to prevent and treat disease. Geert's scientific curiosity lies in how the immune system can effectively respond to a wide array of threats while maintaining immune balance and avoiding reactions to harmless microorganisms. His team investigates human immune cells in the context of various diseases, primarily focusing on inflammatory bowel disease, infectious diseases, and cancer.

Central to his research are the cellular mechanisms involved in the uptake and degradation of foreign antigens, as well as the membrane trafficking processes that drive antigen presentation and cytokine release by immune phagocytes. To explore these pathways, his lab develops and uses cutting-edge microscopy techniques and innovative chemical tools. Their multidisciplinary approach combines advanced studies on primary blood-isolated immune cells with a bottom-up methodology that reconstructs complex trafficking pathways in well-defined systems.

His research has been funded by Starting, Consolidator and Proof-of-Concept Grants from the European Research Council (ERC; 2013, 2018, 2022), Career Development and Young Investigator Grants from HFSP (2014, 2018), and a VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO; 2015). In addition, he received the following awards: Dutch Society Prize for Young Talent from the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences for best Master's research in biochemistry (2004), H.G.K.Westenbrink Prize from the Dutch Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (NVBMB) for best PhD thesis in biochemistry and molecular biology (2009), and the Heineken Young Scientist Award for Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW; 2012).

Arjan Kortholt

Department of Cell Biochemistry
a.kortholt at rug.nl
University of Groningen
Groningen Biomolecular Sciences & Biotechnology Institute (GBB)
P.O.Box 9101, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands
Nijenborgh 7


ORCID: 0000-0001-8174-6397
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Arjan Kortholt studied Chemistry and received his PhD degree from the University of Groningen in 2009. During his PhD, he studied the molecular mechanisms of eukaryotic cell movement and the role of small G-proteins in the navigation in gradients of diffusive molecules. In 2007, he started working on the biochemical and structural characterization of small G-proteins in the laboratory of Prof. Wittinghofer (MPI Dortmund). In 2009, he received a Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and since 2010 he has been appointed as associate professor at GBB, University of Groningen.

A major topic in the Kortholt lab in the recent years has been therapeutic targeting of LRRK2-mediated Parkinson's Disease (PD). He has used a combination of biochemistry and structural characterization to optimize LRRK2 inhibitor binding. These projects have been executed in close collaboration with industry (Merck; GlaxoSmithKline). He has in addition to human LRRK2, successfully used related Roco proteins from other organism to understand the complex structure and regulatory mechanism of LRRK2. Recently, high quality full-length LRRK2 has been purified and with an integrative structural biology Arjan's team was able to obtain the first structural map of full-length LRRK2. This work contributed to the identification of LRRK2 activity modulating Nanobodies and stapled peptides, on which also a joined patent application has been approved. In addition, he investigates the molecular basis of gradient sensing and polarity in the model organism Dictyostelium and human neutrophils. Towards this end, he has used a combination of genetics, microscopy and biochemical interaction screens to identify key regulators of chemotaxis.

Arjan Kortholt has received various prestigious grants and awards, including an NWO-VIDI grant and the NVBMB Prize (2017) from the Dutch Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. His recent research on LRRK2 is, among others, supported by Dutch foundation Stichting ParkinsonFonds, ZonMW, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Disease Research; also, the LRRK2 function and structure consortium, of which Arjan is member since 2010, has been consecutively supported by the Michael J. Fox Foundation. In 2019, Arjan received a TUBITAK 2232 fellowship for outstanding foreign researchers and that allowed him to set up a satellite lab at the Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey.

Frans Bianchi

Department of Molecular Immunology and Microbiology
f.bianchi at rug.nl
University of Groningen
Groningen Biomolecular Sciences & Biotechnology Institute (GBB)
P.O.Box 9101, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands
Nijenborgh 7


ORCID: 0000-0002-9385-9695
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Frans earned a PhD in biochemistry in 2016 from the University of Groningen, specializing in membrane enzymology. During his doctoral studies, he explored the mobility, oligomerization, and localization of plasma membrane-incorporated amino acid transporters in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, using advanced techniques such as single particle tracking, super-resolution microscopy, and circular dichroism. His work demonstrated that the localization of these transporters was influenced by protein conformation and steric interactions, leading to the discovery of a novel lipid-anchoring sequence and furthering understanding of transporter diffusion barriers.

Following his PhD, he pursued postdoctoral research in physiology at Radboud University Medical Center in 2016, where he investigated the dimerization of splice forms of NaCl cotransporters using Förster resonance energy transfer with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy. In 2017, he conducted a second postdoctoral project at the Department of Tumor Immunology at Radboud, where he uncovered that epitopes derived from membrane proteins were overrepresented on MHC-I complexes. This foundational discovery led to his ongoing research on membrane protein antigen presentation.

Currently, his research focuses on cross presentation in macrophages and the role of membrane proteins and lipids in T cell activation, with a particular interest in intracellular trafficking and antigen presentation of membrane proteins. To explore these pathways, his lab develops and uses cutting-edge microscopy techniques and innovative chemical tools. Their multidisciplinary approach combines advanced studies on primary blood-isolated immune cells with a bottom-up methodology that uncovers the pathways involved in these processes.

His work has been supported by several prestigious grants and awards, including the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Short-term Fellowship (2017), the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) Short-term Fellowship (2017), VENI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in (2018) and a Demonstrator grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO; 2023) and the Health Technology Research Innovation Cluster (HTRIC) grant (2024). Additionally, he received the HTRIC Innovative Research Award in (2024).