Kim Bakker

Research

During my daily work, I am part of the lab of Transplantation Immunology. Within this group, we mainly focus on Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA). Together with one of our Post-docs, Gonca Karahan, I serve as a bridge between HLA diagnostics lab and Transplant Immunology research lab. In practice, our research focuses on improving and testing (new) techniques related to HLA and non-HLA antibody screening for diagnostic purposes in organ (mostly kidney) transplantation. Techniques involved in our research consist mainly of solid phase assays such as Luminex assays, ELISA and cell-based assays, such as complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) and flow cytometric crossmatches. We also perform in-vitro B cell cultures to investigate memory B cell-derived HLA antibodies secreted in culture supernatants. We study their characteristics using both solid phase and cellular assays as mentioned above. 

In addition to my research activities, I am involved in on-call duties for organ donation procedures. During these procedures, we apply tasks like HLA-typing of donors (RT-PCR) and performing cell-based crossmatches between donor and (potential) recipients. 

Curriculum vitae

I have studied Biology and Medical Laboratory research (Life Science, BSc) at Hogeschool Leiden, the Netherlands. I did a specialization in cyto-histopathology and followed a minor in immunology. I graduated in 2018 and have been working at the department of Immunology ever since. During my last year of study, I did an internship at the Department of Pathology in the LUMC, where I was involved in research on Diabetic Nephropathy.