Ronald Hans Anton Plasterk (Dutch pronunciation:[ˈroːnɑltˈɦɑnsˈɑntɔmˈplɑstɛr(ə)k]; born 12 April 1957) is a Dutch retired politician of the Labour Party (PvdA). He has a PhD degree in biology, specialising in molecular genetics. He is founder and CEO of Frame Cancer Therapeutics. He was appointed professor at the University of Amsterdam in September 2018.
Education and scientific career
Plasterk was born in The Hague, and he attended the Sint Janscollege secondary school at gymnasium level between 1969 and 1975.[1] He then studied biology at the Leiden University and economics at the University of Amsterdam. During this period, he wrote for the student newspaper and served as treasurer of the Augustinus student association.[2][3] In 1981, he obtained an MSc degree Cum Laude in biology. He obtained his propaedeutic diploma in economics in the same year. From 1981 to 1984 he worked as a researcher at the biomedical institute of Leiden University before earning his PhD degree in mathematics and natural science in 1984.[4] He did genetic research into flatworms for his thesis entitled "Inversion of the G segment of bacteriophage Mu: analysis of a genetic switch".[1]
An admirer of Prime Minister Joop den Uyl, Plasterk joined the Labour Party in 1977 as a student. He served on the Municipal Council of Leiden from 11 October 1982 until 1 September 1984 while a doctoral researcher.[1][3] Since 1995, he has been a political columnist for several national publications and a commentator on TV. In the mid-2000s, he assumed several more active posts in national politics. He served as an advisor of the national convention, a think tank of the Dutch government on government reform.
As minister Plasterk was responsible for higher education and scientific education, for research, culture and media, women's emancipation and of the LBGT, and for policy on the unemployed in the education sector.[14] As such he is vice chair of the national Innovation Platform and member of the task force Women on Top.
A key issue during Plasterk's period as minister was the salary of teachers. When there was no room in the national budget to increase the salaries of teachers as advised by a committee led by Alexander Rinnooy Kan, Plasterk was forced to find money from within the budget of his own ministry. Kan made his advice public just days after the Miljoenennota (the national budget) was published. One of the solutions Plasterk considered was cutting the allowance for students and raising the fees for universities.[15] Plasterk was strongly criticized by the students unions for his proposals and by his coalition partners CDA and CU and the leftwing opposition parties SP and GroenLinks. In the end he and Wouter Bos, the minister of Finance, were able to find sufficient money for a marked increase in the salaries of teachers. Under the pressure of strikes by teachers,[16] Plasterk came to a deal with the teachers´ union in April 2008.[17]
The Cabinet Balkenende IV fell on 20 February 2010 after tensions in the coalition over the extension of the Dutch involvement in the Task Force Urozgan of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and continued to serve in a demissionary capacity until the Labour Party cabinets members resigned on 23 February 2010.
Plasterk started as a columnist in the Intermediair, a weekly magazine oriented at young professionals and academics, in 1995.[9] In the early years he mainly wrote on the political and ethical aspects of genetic research.[2] In 1999 he switched from his column in the Intermediair to a weekly column in de Volkskrant, a leading centre left quality newspaper and a two-weekly spoken column in Buitenhof, a political talkshow produced by the VPRO, the NPS and the VARA. He continued these columns until 2007 when he became minister.[9] In his columns, he fiercely opposed the proposal of Maria van der Hoeven, who preceded him as minister of Education, to teach intelligent design in high schools.[20] Furthermore, in the referendum on the European constitution, he positioned himself as an outspoken critic of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.[21] He opposed the constitution because he considered that it did not clearly codify the responsibilities of the European Union. He also felt that it laid too much emphasis on the free market. In 2000, several of his columns were bundled in the book Leven uit het Lab ("Life from the Lab").
Plasterk's convictions moved to the political right in columns for De Telegraaf after his retirement from politics. He wrote that the Labour Party had lost touch with regular citizens, and he opined that the state of Dutch nature was not deteriorating during the nitrogen crisis in the Netherlands.[3]
Plasterk is an atheist.[22] In 1997 he coined the term ietsisme ("somethingism") to refer to the religious belief that the ChristianGod does not exist, but that there is some greater force that created the universe and governs it.[23] This position is roughly equivalent to 18th century Deism. He first strongly criticized the belief on intellectual grounds, calling it a "poor and irritating phenomenon", but later claimed that it was a mix of atheism and nostalgia, and much more sympathetic "than the idea of a cruel God that wants this misery"[13]
He started working with microbiologist Jan Koster of the Academic Medical Center (soon to become Amsterdam UMC through a merger) on developing methods for cancer immunotherapy through vaccines using biological data collected by Koster. In the data, they found similar frameshift mutations of tumors in different patients, leading to a list of potential vaccines. While they were working on a scientific paper, Plasterk filed a patent for a method to develop personalized cancer treatments in July 2018, and he established a company called Frame Pharmaceuticals in December 2018. His investors and shareholders were Dinko Valerio, Bob Löwenberg, and René Beukema, who had all earned their wealth through the sale of biotechnology company Crucell. Valerio had worked with Plasterk in the 1990s, and Löwenberg had introduced him to Koster. In the meantime, Plasterk had rejoined the University of Amsterdam, to which Amsterdam UMC is affiliated, as a professor with a zero-hour contract in September 2018. He acknowledged that he mostly kept doing research for his own company with the exception of sporadic lectures and supervising some internships.[24]
Frame Pharmaceuticals received €1 million in subsidies to apply their personalized cancer treatments in partnership with Amsterdam UMC and the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). Plasterk's company was acquired by German biopharmaceutical company CureVac in July 2022 for €32 million, half of which was conditional on future results. Preparations for a clinical trial at UMCG on lung cancer patients were halted.[24]
2023–2024 cabinet formation
In November 2023, Plasterk was appointed scout during the 2023–2024 cabinet formation, and he later became informateur for a coalition consisting of the PVV, the VVD, NSC, and BBB.[25][26] The week before Plasterk would release his report – in February 2024 – NSC pulled out of the talks, citing financial setbacks and Plasterk's delayed information about them. Plasterk called the statement "muddled" and denied having withheld details.[27] In his final report, he advised the four parties to continue talking, and Kim Putters was selected as the new informateur.[28][29] When the four parties reached a coalition agreement on 16 May 2024, national media outlets reported that Wilders had proposed Plasterk for the position of Prime Minister of the Netherlands.[1] As part of the negotiations, the parties had agreed to not select their own party leaders.[30]Pieter Omtzigt, leader of the NSC, reportedly opposed Plasterk's nomination for prime minister.[31]
Two months earlier, newspaper NRC had chronicled Plasterk's scientific career in the private sector in the preceding years. They noted the absence of Koster's name in the patent application for their cancer treatment method, and the fact that Amsterdam UMC (Koster's employer) had not shared in the profit's resulting from their joint research. The NRC article noted that as Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Plasterk had successfully worked on a system to have researchers and universities share in profits resulting from their findings. Koster admitted he had not shared interest in commercial applications. The university medical center had found out about the patent when the scientific paper of Plasterk and Koster was published in April 2019. In response to the article, Plasterk denied that Koster had been involved in the inventive step for the cancer treatment method despite their scientific paper crediting Koster with developing the method and performing the bioinformatics analysis.[24] Amsterdam UMC announced in early May that it would perform an investigation.[32] Additionally, a criminal complaint for economic offenses and falsification of documents was filed by an attorney, who argued Plasterk had wrongfully referred to his company as a microbusiness in 2022.[33]
Plasterk withdrew himself as a candidate for prime minister on 20 May 2024, stating that the public perception of the accusations would hinder his ability to function effectively in the role.[34] The Public Prosecution Service later decided not to bring any charges related to the criminal complaint, and Amsterdam UMC concluded in August 2024 that Koster should have been recognized as co-inventor.[35][36]
Ketting, R.F., Fischer, S.E.J., Bernstein, E., Sijen, T., Hannon, G.J., Plasterk R.H.A. (2001). Dicer functions in RNA interference and in synthesis of small RNA involved in developmental timing in C. elegans. Genes & Development 15: 2654–2659.
Sijen, T., Fleenor, J., Simmer, F., Thijssen, K.L., Parrish, S., Timmons, L., Plasterk, R.H.A., Fire, A. (2001). On the role of RNA amplification in dsRNA-triggered gene silencing. Cell 107: 465–476.
Tijsterman, M., Ketting, R.F., Okihara, K. L., Sijen, T., Plasterk, R. H. A. (2002) Short antisense RNAs can trigger gene silencing in C. elegans, depending on the RNA helicase MUT-14. Science 25;295 (5555): 694–697
Wienholds, E., Schulte-Merker, S., Walderich, B., Plasterk, R.H.A. (2002) Target-selected inactivation of the zebrafish rag1 gene. Science 297 (July 5): 99–102.
Wienholds, E., Koudijs, M.J., Van Eeden, F.J.M., Cuppen, E., Plasterk, R.H.A. (2003) The microRNA-producing enzyme Dicer 1 is essential for zebrafish development. Nature Genetics 35: 217–218.
Sijen, T., Plasterk, R.H.A. (2003) Transposon silencing in the Caenorhabditis elegans germ line by natural RNAi. Nature 426: 310–314.
Berezikov, E., Guryev, V., van de Belt, J., Wienholds, E., Plasterk, R.H.A., Cuppen, E. (2005) Phylogenetic shadowing and computational identification of human microRNA genes. Cell 120: 21–24.
Robert, V.J.P., Sijen, T., van Wolfswinkel, J., Plasterk, R.H.A. (2005) Chromatin and RNAi factors protect the C. elegans germline against repetitive sequences. Genes Dev. 19: 782–787.
Sijen T., Steiner F.A., Thijssen K.L., Plasterk R.H.A. (2007) Secondary siRNAs result from unprimed RNA synthesis and form a distinct class. Science. 2007 Jan 12;315(5809): 244–7. - Retracted in 2020.[40]
Koster, J., Pasterk, R.H.A. (2019) A library of Neo open Reading Frame peptides (Nops) as a sustainable resource of common neoantigens in up to 50% of cancer patients. Scientific Reports. 9:6577.
Popular scientific publications
Wormen en waarden (1993)
Techniek van het leven: de betekenis van biotechnologie voor mens en samenleving (2000)
^"NWO Spinoza Prize 1999". Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. 11 September 2014. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 30 January 2016.