Correspondence: van Dongen WD . Triskelion BV, Utrechtseweg 48, 3704 HE Zeist, the Netherlands. Phone: +31 088 866 2800.

Citation:
van Dongen WD. Meet our Editorial Board Member: Dr. William D. van Dongen. J Appl Bioanal 6(1), 4-6 (2020).

Dr. van Dongen, initially trained as laboratory technician, became fascinated in the early 90s by LC-MS technology and immediately recognized its potential. As a result, he pursued his studies by obtaining a Master of Science degree at the Free University in Amsterdam (1993) in small molecule LC-MS. During his M.Sc. research he worked on the development of LC-MS methods for polar pesticides in surface water under the supervision of professor Rob Vreeken [1,2].
Subsequently William obtained his Ph.D. degree (1996) in peptide and protein Mass Spectrometry under the supervision of Professor Wigger Heerma. The main aim of his Ph.D. research was to fill in the gaps, that at that time still existed, in the understanding of the fragmentation behavior of essential sequence ions of peptides (B- and C” type ions) [3-6]. Moreover, he studied the cause of the essential changes in fragmentation pathways as a result of specific amino acid residue substitutions. Fragmentation information obtained from a large number of experiments, enabled him to answer not only “how” do peptides fragment, but also “why” do peptides fragment the way they do [7,8]. Besides these fundamental mass spectrometric studies, he also probed the capabilities of mass spectrometric methods, using the insight gained from the fundamental studies, to solve biochemical problems [9-12].

Directly after his PhD, William stepped into industrial bioanalysis. At that time LC-MS was the rising star in bioanalysis and several bioanalytical CROs in the Netherlands, e.g. Pharma Bio-Research (presently named PRA) and ABL (presently Ardena) in Assen, TNO in Zeist, Notox (presently Charles River) in Den Bosch, were heavily investing in LC-MS technology. It was therefore a logical step for William, having a Ph.D. in mass spec, to initiate his professional career in bioanalytical LC-MS. From 1996-2002 William worked as Study Director/Research Chemist at PRA and TNO where he was involved in building up its bioanalytical LC-MS facilities. He gained extensive scientific expertise in the development and validation of quantitative bioanalytical LC-MS methods for small molecule, peptide and biopharmaceutical drugs and their metabolites in biological fluids (plasma, urine, tissue, etc.), see also refs [13-16]. Moreover, during his time working at the 2 CROs, William enjoyed working with Sponsors, and travelled all over the world to introduce LC-MS to the pharma industry. Also, he then developed his talent for promoting and developing new technologies and bioanalytical market opportunities (e.g. automated sample preparation [15], peptide LC-MS). To be complete, in 2005, he returned to his old position at TNO, where he designed and implemented a successful commercial LC-MS bioanalytical platform for therapeutic proteins [22-26]. During his TNO come back, he also developed several analytical (metabolomics) tools for the discovery of biomarkers and bioactive compounds and safety assessment of complex mixtures or non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) [18-19]. Illustrative is the development of an analytical platform to unravel complex carbohydrate mixtures in baby food, mother’s milk and others [18]. The carbohydrate platform was successfully applied to the infant nutrition constituent galacto-oligosaccharide (GOS) in infant nutrition. The data of this research was applied to obtain the FDA status: Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS).

At a certain moment in time William became very curious about the “other” side; and pursued his career in start-up biotech, medium sized and big pharma, where he used his expertise and capabilities to build the bioanalytical programs for several successful new drug products. He worked for Synthon, ProQR therapeutics and TEVA. He especially enjoyed his time at ProQR, a startup biotech working on therapeutic oligonucleotides, were he became responsible for the Product Characterization and the Bioanalysis group [20-21]. His main accomplishments at ProQR were the design and execution of the complete bioanalytical and analytical CMC portfolio required for clinical studies of the two main compounds of ProQR, including the “high potential” drug QR-110 (https://www.proqr.com/sepofarsen-phase-1-2-study-001-for-lebers-congenital-amaurosis/).
To look at William from the scientific perspective, he is (co-)author of 39 refereed papers (h-index 18) mainly in the field of small molecule, peptide and protein mass spectrometry and bioanalytical LC-MS.
Privately, William has a wife with three children, he likes rowing, sailing, he is a certified drone pilot, and loves good and especially bad movies.

Selected publications

1. Vreeken RJ, van Dongen WD, Brinkman UA. The use of mobile phase additives in the determination of 55 (Polar) pesticides by column liquid chromatography-thermospray-mass spectrometry, Intern J Environ Anal Chem 54, 119 (1994). [CrossRef]
2. Vreeken RJ, van Dongen WD, Brinkman UA, Deelder RS. Coupling of column liquid chromatography and thermospray mass spectrometry via phase-system switching with an ion-exchange trapping column. Biol Mass Spectrom 21, 305 (1992). [CrossRef]
3. van Dongen WD, Heerma W. Sequence ion studies in peptides: the generation of C” ions. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 7, 241 (1993). [CrossRef]
4. van Dongen WD, Heerma W. Sequence ion studies in peptides: the generation of C” ions-Part 2. Org Mass Spectrom 28, 1059 (1993). [CrossRef]
5. van Dongen WD, Heerma W, de Koster CG. The B1-fragment ion from protonated glycine is an electrostatically bound ion/molecule complex between CH2=NH2+ and CO. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 10, 1237 (1996). [CrossRef]
6. van Dongen WD, Heerma W. The diagnostic value of the m/z 102 peak in the positive ion FAB mass spectra of peptides. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 9, 845 (1995). [CrossRef]
7. van Dongen WD, Heerma W. Statistical analysis of mass spectral data of protonated peptides under high-energy CID conditions. J Mass Spectrom 31, 1156 (1996). [CrossRef]
8. van Dongen WD, Heerma W. Comparison CID electrosprayed protonated peptides in cone voltage region and in a low-energy collision cell. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 13, 1712 (1999). [CrossRef]
9. Boots J, van Dongen WD. Identification of the active site histidine in Staphylococcus hyicus lipase using chemical modification and mass spectrometry. Biochim Biophys Acta 1248, 27 (1995). [CrossRef]
10. Visser S, van Dongen WD. Identification of a new genetic variant of bovine k-casein using reversed-phase HPLC and mass spectrometric analysis. J Chromatogr 711, 141, (1995). [CrossRef]
11.Visser S, van Dongen WD. Action of a cell-envelope proteinase (CEPIII-type) from Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremonis AM1 on bovine κκ-casein. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 41, 644 (1994). [CrossRef]
12. van Dongen WD, van Bommel JH, van Wassenaar PD, Heerma W, Haverkamp J. Rapid identification of specific mutations in the sequence of an enzyme variant produced by protein engineering using HPLC-FAB MS techniques. Biol Mass Spectrom 23, 675 (1994). [CrossRef]
13. Bruins CH, van Dongen WD. On-line coupling of solid-phase extraction with mass spectrometry for the analysis of biological samples: I. Determination of clenbuterol in urine. J Chromatogr A 863, 115–122 (1999). [CrossRef]
14. Lagerwerf FM, van Dongen WD. Exploring the bounderies of quantitative HPLC-MS/MS. TRAC-Trend Anal Chem 19, 419 (2000). [CrossRef]
15. Schellen A, Ooms B, van de Lagemaat D, Vreeken R, van Dongen WD. Generic SPE-LC-MS/MS assay protocol for fast determination of drugs in biological fluids. J Chromatogr 778, 251 (2003). [CrossRef]
16. Coulier L, van Dongen WD, Brüll LP, Luider TM. Simultaneous determination of endogenous deoxynucleotides and phosphorylated nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors in peripheral blood mononuclear cells using ion-pair liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Proteomics Clin Appl 2, 1557–1562 (2008). [CrossRef]
17. van Dongen WD, Heck AJ. Binding of selected carbohydrates to apo-concanavalin A studied by electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry. Analyst 125, 583 (2000). [CrossRef]
18. Coulier L, Slaghek T, van Dongen WD. In-Depth Characterization of Prebiotic Galacto-oligosaccharides by a Combination of Analytical Techniques. J Agric Food Chem 57, 8488–8495 (2009). [CrossRef]
19. van Dongen WD, Rennen M, Coulier L, Van Stee L, Houben G. Analytical strategy to assess the safety of foods. Toxixol Lett 172, 204 (2007). [CrossRef]
20. van Dongen WD, Bartlett MG. The role of fluorinated alcohols as mobile phase modifiers for LC-MS analysis of oligonucleotides. J Am Soc Mass Spectrom 28, 190 (2017). [CrossRef]
21. van Dongen WD, Niessen WM. Bioanalytical LC-MS of therapeutic oligonucleotides. Bioanalysis, 3(5) 541-564 (2011). [CrossRef]
22. Sauerborn M, van Dongen WD. Practical considerations for the pharmacokinetic and immunogenic assessment of antibody-drug conjugates. BioDrugs 28(4), 383-391 (2014). [CrossRef]
23. Kleinnijenhuis AJ, van Dongen WD. Quantitative bottom up analysis of infliximab in serum using protein A purification and integrated μLC-electrospray chip IonKey MS/MS technology. Bioanalysis 8 (9) 891-904 (2016). [CrossRef]
24. van den Broek I, van Dongen WD. LC–MS-based quantification of intact proteins: perspective for clinical and bioanalytical applications. Bioanalysis 7(15), 1943–1958 (2015). [CrossRef]
25. Kleinnijenhuis AJ, van Dongen WD. A generic sample preparation approach for LC-MS/MS bioanalysis of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies in serum applied to Infliximab. J Appl Bioanal 1(1), 26-34 (2015). [CrossRef]
26. van den Broek I, Niessen WM, van Dongen WD. Bioanalytical LC-MS of protein-based biopharmaceuticals. J Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci 929, 161-79 (2013). [CrossRef]

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