Jerome Custers

Jerome Custers, Ph.D., is Senior Scientific Director Vaccine Research, Viral Vaccines at Janssen, Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson. He joined Janssen in 2011 through the acquisition of Crucell Holland BV, a Dutch Biotech company he joined back in 2002 as a research scientist to work on the development of vaccines against a variety of infectious diseases based on adenoviral vectors. Genetic engineering of viruses has been at the core of his vaccine research performed with the last years expanding into structural vaccinology for antigen design and RNA vaccines for antigen delivery. Jerome co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles and more than 25 patent applications. Jerome was trained as a molecular biologist and prior to joining Crucell he worked for 8 years in the biotechnology industry (Syngenta). He obtained his PhD from the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands in 2007. Jerome’s current responsibilities include vaccine platform development, design of novel vaccine candidates and prototype vaccine development. His team has been instrumental in developing the Adenoviral vector platform technology that has resulted in the successful development of two authorized vaccines (Ebola and COVID-19) and several investigational vaccines in development.