When customers join the Luminex Team, they bring invaluable knowledge and experience to their roles. A veteran xMAP® Technology user, Wilco de Jager, PhD joined Luminex after running a laboratory at Utrecht University. When our commercial partners need help building or refining their assays, Wilco draws on his extensive xMAP Technology knowledge to bring those assays to life. He joined Luminex in 2018 and is a Senior Field Applications Scientist, based out of our office in the Netherlands.
Q: What are your responsibilities at Luminex?
A: I help customers design custom xMAP assays. My main focus is on high-end, high-throughput, and pharmaceutical applications. If a customer is starting from scratch, we’ll explain how xMAP Technology works, then we’ll help build the assay and prepare it for commercialization. We also help customers who already use xMAP Technology but have hit a roadblock; if they need to move an R&D assay to a regulated environment or from low-throughput to high-throughput, we help adapt the assay with them.
Q: What did you do before joining Luminex?
A: I started a biomarker core laboratory based on xMAP Technology at Utrecht University. We built a custom 225-plex proteomic assay that could run anything from a single marker up to all 225 targets in any combination. It was a fully validated assay used for drug registration and biomarker hunting. We had five technicians and ran about 175,000 samples per year.
Q: What drew you to Luminex?
A: The technology. I was an early adopter of xMAP Technology at Utrecht—we bought our first Luminex machine in early 2002, back before Luminex was even in Europe and we had to import it from the US. They flew it over in an airplane seat! My own PhD was built around xMAP Technology. I did a lot of biomarker hunting in pediatric diseases and also brought a few biomarkers to the clinic.
Q: If you could solve any clinical or genetic challenge, what would it be?
A: I would choose pediatric orphan diseases—or rare diseases, as they are known in the US—particularly autoimmune diseases, because of my professional experience. Children with pediatric orphan diseases have these illnesses their whole lives, but unlike children with cancer and other diseases, they can’t heal and they won’t get better. It has a massive impact on their lives.
Q: If you weren’t a scientist at Luminex, where would you be?
A: I would lead a clinical chemistry laboratory.
Q: What is something about you that no one at Luminex knows?
A: Most people don’t know that I danced in national championships in the Netherlands. That’s actually how I met my wife.
Q: What’s your favorite thing to do on the weekend?
A: I enjoy playing and refereeing field hockey games.
