Hanneke Schuitemaker

Hanneke Schuitemaker is a Dutch virologist, the Global Head of Viral Vaccine Discovery and Translational Medicine at Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Vaccines & Prevention, and a professor of virology at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers of the University of Amsterdam (since 2004). She has been involved in the development of Janssen's Ebola vaccine and is involved in the development of a universal flu vaccine, HIV vaccine, RSV vaccine and COVID-19 vaccine.

Early life and education Schuitemaker (1964) grew up in the Netherlands. Her mother was a bookkeeper and her father was an electrical engineer.

Schuitemaker joined the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam in 2008, where she was made Chair of Experimental Immunology. Two weeks later, Crucell was acquired by Janssen Vaccines, part of Johnson & Johnson. At Janssen, Schuitemaker worked on the universal flu vaccine. She returned to working on vaccinations to protect against HIV-1. Schuitemaker demonstrated the efficacy of the adenovirus/protein vaccines against simian immunodeficiency virus in rhesus macaques. In 2018, Schuitemaker's vaccine regime was shown to induce an immune response to HIV in humans. Results of Imbokodo, an investigation into the potential for this vaccine to save the lives of thousands of young women in Sub-Saharan Africa, are expected in 2021. Another study, Mosaico, will see 3,800 individuals taking part in a Phase 3 clinical trial of the vaccine.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Janssen looked to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Their approach started with a single viral genome, which was being tested as of March 2020.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Schuitemaker announced Johnson & Johnson's ambition to develop a vaccine against the unknown infectious disease. Her team's approach started with the discovery of the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the disease COVID-19. The various vaccine candidates have been tested from March 2020. In mid-May, she announced that Janssen's most hopeful vaccine variant will be tested on humans in July 2020. In November 2020, Jansen Vaccines announced that the production of the COVID vaccine was delayed by several months due to the occurrence of an unknown disease in one test subject in phase 3. The US regulator FDA approved the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for use on February 27, 2021. Approval by the European Medicines Agency was given on March 11.

Selected publications

Personal life Schuitemaker has three sons.