Onno C Meijer is professor in neuroendocrinology of corticosteroids, at the department of Medicine. He is board member of the Nuclear Receptor Research Network, and of the foundation Stress-NL, and guest professor at Shenyang’s China Medical University.

More information about Onno Meijer

Onno C Meijer is professor in neuroendocrinology of corticosteroids, at the department of Medicine. He is board member of the Nuclear Receptor Research Network, and of the foundation Stress-NL, and guest professor at Shenyang’s China Medical University.

Hormones are the long term coordinators of the body. In case of stress exposure, corticosteroid hormones modulate the activity of many organs in an attempt to optimize the response to stress. Often this is beneficial, but exposure to these hormones can become excessive. It may also happen that the body suffers from overexposure to synthetic corticosteroids, which are used broadly as antiinflammatory drugs. In this case, corticosteroids cause – or increase vulnerability to – disease.

We try to understand how the brain regulates corticosteroid levels (neuro-endocrinology), and and we try to understand how – in many organs – these hormones can be either beneficial or detrimental. We also study new molecules that interfere with corticosteroid signaling and that may be used as drugs to treat stress-related diseases.

Academic career

Onno Meijer studied medical biology in Utrecht. He obtained his PhD on 28 November 1996 with Ron de Kloet, studying the interaction of corticosteroids with serotonin neurotransmission in rodents. He spent two years at USSF, expanding his molecular biological skills, and refuting an oversimplistic principle on corticosteroid signaling. From 1999 – 2011 he worked on brain penetration of corticosteroids, and mechanisms of brain-region specific actions of these hormones at what is now the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research. In 2012 he joined the LUMC to expand his research with metabolic, and translational aspects, and with actual research on intervention in stress-related disease. His inauguration lecature on 12 September 2016 was entitled: Cortisol from Head to Toe: Good and Bad of a Stress Hormone.

Prizes and honourable appointments

Meijer received the Galenus Research Prize in 2008, and the Prize of the Dutch Pharmacological Society in 2011. Het is a guest professor at China Medical University in Shenyang, China since 2017.

In 2011 he was the recipient of the Prof Tammeling prize for best teacher in the LUMC. He coordinates the module ‘Hormones and the Nervous System’ that won the prize for Best Module twice.

Publications