About
Introduction
As a medical biologist I have always had a keen interest in development and implementation of patient-derived model systems to study human diseases and to evaluate novel treatment modalities.
After obtaining my PhD at Leiden University in the field of gene therapy for vascular diseases, I moved to the oncology field focusing on brain tumors at the dept of Neurosurgery VUMC Amsterdam. International traineeships include dept of Pediatric Oncology at Gustave Roussy Institute in Paris (2001) and the Molecular Neuro-Oncology Laboratories Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (2003). In 2007 I joined the dept of Neurosurgery at Erasmus MC to set up a laboratory focused on the development and clinical translation of novel treatments for malignant brain tumors.
Fields of expertise
Research focus is the development of novel treatments for malignant glioma using innovative model systems for their preclinical evaluation. Basis of this work is formed by a mounting tumor cell bank containing over 400 glioma cell cultures, which was built over the past 10 years. A drug development pipeline has now been established encompassing systematic biobanking of patient-derived tumor cells, in vitro drug screening, molecular analysis, clinical data acquisition, bioinformatical analysis, and in vivo validation.Treatment efficacy is correlated to the molecular the profile of the individual tumor, with the ultimate goal of developing personalized treatment strategies for glioma patients.
This platform is also implemented in the academic drug screening service GLIOscreen®. Efforts are ongoing to translate the use of this platform toward clinical decision-making for (recurrent) glioblastoma patients. Other ongoing preclinical and trial-associated research is focused on gaining insight into the role of innate and acquired immune response in oncolytic viral therapy of glioblastoma and development of strategies to improve treatment response.
Education and career
- MSc Medical Biology, University of Amsterdam
- PhD in Gene Therapy, Leiden University
- Post-doctoral research at Dept of Neurosurgery VUMC and Neuro-Oncology laboratories, Mass General Hospital,Boston
