Edwin van der Pol (www.edwinvanderpol.com) is an assistant professor at the Vesicle Observation Center, Amsterdam University Medical Centers in the Netherlands. Edwin studied applied physics and specialized in optics and biophysics at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. In 2009, he graduated from his Master of Science in applied physics at the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics. In 2015, he received his PhD cum laude on the topic of extracellular vesicle detection, for which he received the PhD thesis award from the Dutch Society for Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering and the Andreas Bonn medal from the Dutch Society for the Advancement of Science, Medicine and Surgery.
Currently, Edwin focuses on the development of disease biomarkers based on characterizing single extracellular vesicles in body fluids. Together with his colleagues, he develops novel technologies (https://www.utwente.nl/en/tnw/cancer-id/), software, and standardization methods (www.metves.eu) to take extracellular vesicle diagnostics to the clinic. To make his inventions available to other vesicle researchers, Edwin co-founded the company Exometry (www.exometry.com). Examples of clinical projects are “Circulating nano traces to identify the cause of stroke” (CINTICS), with the aim to develop a microfluidic chip to enable early differentiation between haemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke based on extracellular vesicles; “Antiplatelet therapy effect on extracellular vesicles” (AFFECT), with the aim to compare the effects of medication on plasma concentrations of different subtypes of extracellular vesicles in patients with acute myocardial infarction; and “Platelet reactivity and treatment with prostacyclin analogues in pulmonary arterial hypertension” (PAPAYA), with the aim to compare the release of extracellular vesicles from platelets in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension treated with different medication. The latter two studies are being conducted in close collaboration with the Medical University of Warsaw, Poland.