Sebastiaan Theuns

Background

About Sebastiaan Theuns

Dr. Sebastiaan Theuns is co-founder of PathoSense, a spin-off from Ghent University which offers complete diagnostics of infectious diseases in veterinary medicine. The technology makes use of third-generation sequencing (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) and allows veterinarians to make a diagnosis without having to make a prior selection of which pathogens to test for. The spin-off was generated from the Laboratory of Virology of Prof. Hans Nauwynck. As a Certified Service Provider from ONT, we also offer affordable and quick long-read sequencing for the analysis of viral & bacterial genome and the microbiome. In 2010, Sebastiaan obtained his diploma as a veterinarian, after which he successfully defended his PhD in 2015. He then developed expertise in veterinary vaccine development during a postdoctoral VLAIO Innovation Mandate. Sebastiaan has always shown interest in the diagnostics of infectious diseases in different animal species and saw a huge opportunity for innovation with the emergence of new DNA/RNA sequencing technologies. Since 2017, his research has led to the development of a complete 'sample-to-diagnostic-interpretation' platform for infectious diseases in veterinary medicine, which culminated in the spin-off PathoSense in October 2020. Since then, PathoSense has been used in more than 30 animal species by veterinarians in Belgium, the Netherlands and several other European countries. Since May 2023, DGZ has now become an exclusive partner to execute the PathoSense analyses for Belux in their laboratories. In this phase we are actively looking for other interested partners in Europe, so don’t hesitate to contact me. We believe that innovation is crucial and that is why R&D will remain an important spearhead in our further development & scaling of the company. Sebastiaan and PathoSense have already been selected for several prestigious start-up accelerator programs, including the Belgian MedTechAccelerator in 2018 and StartIt@KBC in 2020-2021, and was admitted to the Vlerick Business School Scale-Up Masterclass of 2022. Sebastiaan is a co-author of >30 scientific publications and a patent. He is also a co-promoter of several doctoral candidates.