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Prof. Dr. Zeger Debyser

Laboratory for Molecular Virology and Gene Therapy 

Center for Molecular Medicine - Faculty of Medicine - KU Leuven

Zeger Debyser (born 1965) is Medical Doctor (KU Leuven, 1990). He obtained his PhD at the KU Leuven in 1994 for research on non-nucleoside RT inhibitors as anti-HIV agents with Prof. Dr. E. De Clercq as promoter at the Rega Institute.

In 1992-1993, Dr. Debyser was a BAEF research fellow at the Harvard Medical School with Drs. C. Richardson and S. Tabor and studied T7 DNA replication. Between 1994 and 1997, a clinical virology training in the Leuven University Hospitals was undertaken.

Since 2009, he is Full Professor at the KU Leuven. As a full professor at KU Leuven he heads a research group of 20 people with a major focus on HIV research and a minor focus on gene therapy and drug discovery. He acted as mentor of more than 20 PhD students, 7 of whom got faculty positions worldwide. His group is known for pioneering research on LEDGF/p75 as cofactor of HIV integrase . The lab also runs the Leuven Viral Vector Core (LVVC). He discovered LEDGINs as first-in-class inhibitors of integrase-LEDGF/p75 interaction.

As an MD he has long standing collaborations with experts from different disciplines such as medicinal chemistry, biophysics, structural biology because these disciplines are complementary and required to translate the basic research. He has 262 peer reviewed publications, > 9500 citations, an h-index of 56 and is inventor on 16 patents or patent applications.

In 2016 the research group received the Gold Medal of the Flemish Parliament for their contribution to Science and Innovation.