Carla C. Baan, PhD, is Professor and head of the Nephrology & Transplantation Laboratory at Erasmus Medical Center, University Hospital Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Dr Baan obtained her doctorate from Erasmus University, The Netherlands.

Her position involves the supervision of doctorate research related to the role of cytokines, regulatory T cells, B cells, cell therapy and immunosuppressive drugs in clinical organ transplantation.At the laboratory immunological tests to monitor pathways of donor directed reactivity are developed and used including multi-parameter flow cytometry/Facs sort and Elispot for T and B cell profiling, phosphospecific flow cytometry for the analysis of intracellular signaling pathways, cell culture assays to measure antigen specific proliferation & cytotoxicity, GWAS and PCR for gene expression and epigenetics, and immunohistochemistry.The aim of this translational work is to titrate the immunosuppressive burden on our patients in such a way that side-effects (infections, malignancies, cardiovascular events) are kept at a minimum while at the same time rejection processes are prevented.

Dr Baan has been the President of the European Society for Organ Transplantation (2011-2013) and has been a member of the board of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (2015-2016). Currently, dr Baan is the Executive Editor_Basic Sciences of the Transplantation Journal.