Joost Ph Drenth - Biography#

Joost PH Drenth is a Hepatologist and the current chair of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology of the Radboudumc, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He received his medical degree from the University of Maastricht. He was trained as an Internist and Gastroenterologist at the Radboudumc. He was a clinical research fellow with the Dutch Research Council and obtained his PhD on hyper-IgD and periodic fever syndrome, cum laude. He obtained a Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences fellowship to stay for 2 years as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda USA. He is the recipient of the Dutch Research Council VIDI award and the 2012 “Karel Lodewijk Verleijsen” prize of the Belgian Academy of Arts en Sciences.

He serves as member and chairman of a number of committees of professional organisations at the national as well as the European level, most notably United European Gastroenterology (Vienna Austria). His research interest covers the molecular background of (inherited) gastrointestinal diseases and include polycystic liver disease, auto-immune hepatitis and hepatitis C. He initiated and chaired national research programs on infectious hepatitis (HepNed) and autoimmune hepatitis.

Drenth is an effective clinical investigator who has succesfully builds research networks and who puts the human patient central in his research. He is truly a translational researcher and bridges the spectrum form gene discovery to clinical trials with novel compounds. As a clinical investigator his research aims to serve patients’ needs as quickly as possible by translating experimental research into efforts that improve the quality of life of patients.

Dr. Drenth cloned genes for polycystic liver disease and develops a FDA validated disease questionnaire to assess disease severity. He ran a number of clinical trials that led to the discovery of a successful treatment for polycystic liver disease. He has authored over 400 peer reviewed articles. He contributed chapters to general textbooks in Rheumatology (Kelley's Textbook of Rheumatology), Hepatology (Zakim and Boyer’s Hepatology: A Textbook of Liver Disease) and Nephrology (Oxford Textbook of Clinical Nephrology ) and participated in drafting international guidelines. He was editor for the Netherlands Journal of Medicine as well as the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde. He acts as the pillar head in the European Rare diseases Network (ERN) Liver consortium.