dr. Anna Roukens, MD

Research

Anna's research focuses on how vaccines work in healthy individuals and in people with immune disorders, as well as on different methods of vaccine administration. This includes vaccines such as yellow fever and rabies, as well as vaccines for various risk groups, such as hepatitis B, pneumococcal disease, and COVID-19. With intradermal vaccination it is possible for many vaccines to achieve an adequate immune response with much lower vaccine doses.

With Simon Jochems, associate professor at LUCID-R, she works together on the in depth investigation of the immune response to pneumococcal vaccination. They compare the germinal center response via lymph node fine needle aspirations with the peripheral blood response. They co-supervise PhD-students Danny de Vos and Giovanni Loe-Sack-Sioe.

In 2025 she received an Open Competition grant to investigate the influence of PFAS on the immune systems, measured via vaccine responses, for which she set up a consortium with RIVM and VU. She co-supervised a PhD student with Mariateresa Coppola, senior researcher at LUCID-R.

Anna Roukens is the local PI on two industry-initiated HIV treatment studies, investigating new treatments (e.g. one tablet once a week, or broadly neutralizing antibodies once every six months).

Curriculum Vitae

Anna Roukens is an internist–infectious disease specialist and associate professor at the Leiden University Medical Center, where she combines patient care with research, training, and teaching. She obtained her PhD in 2010 and did her internal medicine residencies afterwards. She worked in a non-academic hospital in Rotterdam from 2015-2019, after which she returned to het LUMC to combine patient care with research. Her research is funded by the following grants: Bill&Melinda Gates (2021), LUMC PhD (2021), COVID vaccination ZonMw (2021), Clinical fellow ZonMw (2022), Infectious Diseases ZonMw (2023), Open Competition ZonMw (2025)