The research headed by Van der Poll has a strong translational character with sepsis (and its major cause pneumonia) as the main topic. Focus lies on the innate immune response, in particular pattern recognition receptors, and on the regulation of the procoagulant response. The Key objective is to determine the mechanisms by which the innate immune and procoagulant responses to infection are initiated and subsequently regulated. This research makes use of both observational studies in patients with clinical disease (in particular sepsis and pneumonia) and mechanistic investigations in healthy volunteers (who are exposed to bacterial products via the intravenous or intrabronchial route) and genetically modified mice lacking or over-expressing proteins implicated in innate immunity or coagulation (in which clinically relevant models of sepsis have been established).

Contained within this research, Van der Poll is the leading scientist in biomarker discovery and validation in 3 large European projects on pneumonia, peritonitis and sepsis (COMBACTE-CARE, COMBACTE-MAGNET and SEPCELL), which provides unique opportunities to further expand the translational research by his group.