Johan L. van der Plas is a physician and clinical pharmacologist at the Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. He is currently attending his specialist training to become a certified Clinical Microbiologist. He defended his PhD titled ‘Advances in Clinical Development for Vaccines and Therapeutics against Respiratory Virus Infections’ in 2023. His PhD was conducted at the Centre of Human Drug Research (Leiden) and consisted of early phase clinical trials for vaccines against RSV and influenza, antivirals against SARS-CoV-2 and explored innovative clinical trial and regulatory infrastructures to expedite clinical development of anti-infectives during pandemics. He is an experienced clinical trial manager and functioned as a project leader on more than 15 trials (including compounds directed against RSV, influenza, SARS-CoV-2, malaria and immunotherapy). He is experienced in intranasal administration, (non-)invasive mucosal sampling, handling of GMO-vaccines and the validation and application of controlled human infections models in early phase clinical trials. Next to his clinical work at the university hospital, he is a guest researcher at the Centre of Human Drug Research and sits on a strategic advisory committee for the development of a novel glycopeptide antibiotic developed by the Leiden University.
