Dr. Jacobus Bosch appointed as a member of the new Specialized Ethics Committee for Special Procedures

Dr. Jacobus Bosch, long-standing research partner of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University Hospital Cologne, has been appointed by the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) and the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices as a member of the new Specialized Ethics Committee for Special Procedures.

The aim of this new Specialized Ethics Committee for Special Procedures is to promote scientific progress by relieving the existing Ethics Committee of the burden of deciding on the following topics:
– Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMP),
– new medicinal products that are tested in humans for the first time,
– Drug trials with a companion diagnostic,
– medicinal products that are discussed in the Emergency Use Group of the European Medicines Agency (EMA),
– master protocol studies.

It thus takes decisions on particularly innovative, urgent and scientifically complex topics and examines them from an ethical, scientific and legal perspective.
The members of the Commission are appointed by the Federal Ministry of Health for a period of five years. The Commission consists of 93 members and will begin its work on July 1, 2025. The members perform their duties independently and on an honorary basis. Dr. Bosch was appointed to the committee for the field of haematology and oncology.

Dr. Jacobus Bosch has been Research Director for Oncology at the Centre for Human Drug Research at Leiden University, the Netherlands, since 2022. His research focuses on translational (immuno)oncology. He has also been conducting research in collaboration with the Department of Ophthalmology at the University Hospital Cologne since 2015, initially as a project leader in the DFG Research Unit FOR 2240 and currently together with Prof. Dr. Dr. Ludwig Heindl in the DFG Collaborative Research Center 1607 “New immunomodulatory and anti-(lymph)angiogenic therapies for age-associated eye diseases leading to blindness” on the topic “In depth investigation of the molecular signaling mechanisms and cellular function of midkine, neuropilin-2 and sFLT1 in conjunctival and uveal melanoma”.
He received his undergraduate medical training at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and earned his MD and PhD at Leiden University. During this time, he completed a research fellowship in ocular immunology at the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass. Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, and worked as a post-doctoral fellow in tumor immunology at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland Baltimore County, before completing his residency and clinical training in combination with leading a research group in internal medicine, hematology and medical oncology at the University Hospital Erlangen, Germany. At the Center for Clinical Trials at Hannover Medical School (MHH), he was a senior physician and head of clinical operations responsible for early clinical trials.