Prof Dr Theo de Kok (T.M.C.M.)
Career history
Prof. Theo de Kok graduated in 1988 as biologist at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, with Microbiology and Toxicology as majors. He received his PhD in 1992 at the University of Limburg, after 4 years of investigating the relationship between dietary habits, the endogenous formation of carcinogenic compounds and colorectal cancer risk. From 1992 until 1997 he was appointed as course team manager at the Open University of the Netherlands, where he developed distance teaching materials in the field of Food and Toxicology, Environmental Medicine and Occupational Health. In the same period, he was also involved in several research projects at Maastricht University. In 1997, he was appointed as assistant professor at this University and became coordinator of the Environmental Health Sciences programme. He continued his research I the field of genetic toxicology and gene-environment interactions. In 1998 he was registered as Toxicologist by the National Committee for Post-Doctoral Medical-Biological Research training in The Netherlands (SMBWO).
In 2008 he was appointed as Associate Professor at the Deparmtent of Health Risk Analysis and Toxicology, and in 2014 he became a full professor in the domain of 'Population-based Toxicogenomics', at the Department of Toxicogenomics, of Maastricht University. He was appointed as chair of the Department Toxicogenomics (TGX) in 2020, which was transformed into the Department of Translational Genomics (TGX) in 2024.
Research topics.
His major research interests include:
- Genomics studies to indentify molecular mechanisms involved in (colorectal) cancer development, particularly related to dietary habits and environmental exposures;
- Designing personalized prevention strategies to reduce the risk of chronic diseases using genomics approaches;
- Studying the role of (oxidative) DNA damage in cancer risk and evaluation of chemopreventive action of dietary phytochemicals;
- Human exposome studies to identify environmental risk factors;
- The development of new approach methodologies (NAMs) to replace animal tests for the safety assessment of chemicals.
He has been actively involved in a wide range of large international research consortia, including:
NewGeneris, CARCINOGENOMICS, NUGO, ECNIS, ENVIROGENOMARKERS, EXPOSOMICS, PHYTOME, TransQST, and ONTOX.
He is a member of the Netherlands Society of Toxicology (Genetic Toxicology Section and the Toxicology and risk evaluation section), and is currently Executive Board member and treasurer of the European Federation of Toxicology EUROTOX.