Harry Janssen

Dr. Harry Janssen graduated from medical school at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. During his studies, he spent one year as research fellow in Hepatology at the Mayo Clinic. He obtained his PhD in Rotterdam on the role of immune modulating therapy in chronic hepatitis B, and subsequently trained in Internal Medicine at Leiden University Medical Center and in Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University Medical Center.

Following his registration as a Gastroenterologist, he returned to the Mayo Clinic for a research fellowship in Hepatology at the Center of Basic Research in Digestive Diseases. In 2001, he became a staff member and in 2006, he was appointed as Professor of Hepatology and Head of the Liver Unit at Erasmus University Medical Centre. In 2011, Dr. Janssen was named Section Head for Viral Hepatitis at the Medical Centre.

In 2013, Dr. Janssen joined University Health Network in Toronto, where he was appointed as the Francis Family Chair in Liver Research and the Director of the Toronto Centre for Liver Disease – the largest clinical program in liver disease and viral hepatitis in North America.

As a Principal Investigator, Dr. Janssen has coordinated numerous European and global multicentre studies on anti-viral treatment for chronic viral hepatitis. He was awarded a Clinical Fellowship and an Innovational Research grant (VIDI) from the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO) to study strategies for immune control in viral hepatitis and has published many international articles on this subject. Dr. Janssen is currently the Principal Investigator leading the largest site in the North American Hepatitis B Research Network (HBRN), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Dr. Janssen was previously Chairman of the Dutch Association of Hepatology and was elected as Rising Star in Gastroenterology and Hepatology by the Association of the National European Societies of Gastroenterology. He has been member of the editorial board of Hepatology, Journal of Hepatology and Best Practice in Gastroenterology. He has published over 310 original peer-reviewed papers and has mentored over 35 PhD students in the last Decade.

In addition to his longstanding expertise in anti-viral therapy for chronic viral hepatitis, Dr. Janssen is also a leading scientist in the field of vascular disorders of the liver.