Cancer Center Amsterdam

The CCA grants fund research projects for 1 to 2 years at various laboratories within Amsterdam UMC. An important criterion in evaluating the project proposals is the potential clinical application of the insights gained from the research. Also, collaborations between different researchers residing at different Amsterdam UMC locations are encouraged to reinforce and complement professional networks. Recently, thirteen promising research projects were granted funding. Amsterdam UMC Cancer Center Amsterdam congratulates all awarded researchers. 

Awardees

• Dr. Anton Engelsman – ‘A Phase I/II Proof-of-Concept Study of Somatostatin Receptor Type-2 Targeted Fluorescence Guided Surgery of Gastroenteropancreatic Neuroendocrine Neoplasms’
  Anton is the project leader for an investigation into the use of a fluorescent tracer to improve surgical removal of lesions originating from neuroendocrine tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. The fluorescent tracer facilitates identification of cancer cells and this will likely improve the surgical removal of these tumors and associated metastatic lesions.

• Dr. Costa Bachas – ‘Computational approaches for predicting outcome parameters in myeloid neoplasms from clinical flow cytometry stem cell data’
  Residual disease after chemotherapy is an important, but difficult to detect, prognostic factor for patients with acute myeloid leukemia or myelodysplastic syndrome. Costa and collaborators aim to use advanced cell identification techniques in combination with machine learning to develop a specific and automated method to diagnose residual disease.

• Dr. Daniël Miedema – ‘Chromosomal instability as key regulator of the immune microenvironment of cancers’
  Together with Sarah Derks, Daniël will apply a new analytical method to large datasets to accurately measure chromosomal instability, a feature in over 80% of cancers. They aim to determine how chromosomal instability affects the local immune system in a tumor.

• Dr. Daniela Oprea-Lager – ‘Dynamic [¹⁸F]FES PET imaging in patients with metastatic ER+ breast cancer’
  Daniela and team will investigate if a biomarker that is used to determine the estrogen receptor status of breast cancer can also predict treatment response. The goal is to improve tailor-made therapy for patients with estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer.

• Dr. Daoud Sie – ‘In depth characterization of leukemia minimal residual disease using single cell transcriptomic analysis combined with quantitative cell surface protein profiling’
  Daoud will lead a study on chemotherapy-resistant leukemia cells that are responsible for the recurrence of the disease. Utilizing new single-cell sequencing technology, the team will identify and compare cells at different stages of disease to increase the knowledge of mechanisms that cause therapy resistance and recurrence.

• Dr. Joep Grootjans – ‘Mapping the human peritoneal immune system to identify novel immunomodulatory targets for the treatment of peritoneal metastasized cancer’
  Together with Jurriaan Tuynman, Joep aims to characterize the immune system of the abdominal membrane (peritoneum) in humans and investigate local immunological changes that occur in patients with peritoneum metastatic cancer. The study could yield new leads for immunotherapy to improve treatments against this deadly disease in the future.

• Prof. Dr. Josée Zijlstra – ‘Targeting and imaging glutamine metabolism in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia’
  Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) cells in lymph nodes rely on the molecule ‘glutamine’ as a source of energy. By closely studying CLL glutamine metabolism in a lymph node culture system, Josée and colleagues aim to identify new treatment opportunities. Labelled glutamine will also be used as a tracer molecule to develop new medical imaging tools to visualize CLL in patients.

• Dr. Lotte de Winde – ‘Development of an in vitro human B-cell lymphoma model to study cancer dissemination’
  Lotte and her colleagues aim to develop an innovative culture model of interconnected human lymph node-on-chips to investigate the disease progression and spread of B-cell lymphoma.

• Dr. Marieke Fransen – ‘Immune-modulating effects of various doses of (chemo)radiotherapy and immunotherapy on tumor draining lymph nodes in stage II-III NSCLC patients’
  Marieke and colleagues will study the effects of different doses of radiotherapy on the immunological anti-tumor response of non-metastatic draining lymph nodes in lung cancer patients. They aim to improve treatment strategies combining radiotherapy and immunotherapy to achieve better therapeutic effectiveness.

• Dr. Marike van der Leeden – ‘OPRAH-pro study: Self-monitoring and advice on protein intake, integrated into an accelerometer-based physical activity intervention, to improve functional recovery in patients with cancer undergoing gastrointestinal or lung surgery’
  During this project, Marike and her team aim to help patients who had oncology surgery recover better by encouraging sufficient protein intake and physical activity. Patients will wear an accelerometer and activity and diet will be monitored through a tailored health and fitness Android app.

• Dr. Oliver Gurney-Champion – ‘Respiratory mOtion-compensaTed Abdominal Tumour Imaging at high-resolutiON (ROTATION): Quantitative biomarkers and anatomical imaging’
  With the support of others, Oliver aims to improve imaging of the chest and abdomen that have poor MRI resolution with a new method of image data reconstruction. This new approach allows scanning while breathing freely without loss of image quality.

• Prof. Dr. Renske Steenbergen – ‘Ovarian cancer detection by (epi)genetic biomarker analysis in urine’
  Renske leads a team that will investigate whether the presence of ovarian cancer-specific changes in the DNA can also be found in the urine of women with ovarian cancer. Successful development of this method can greatly improve the diagnosis of ovarian cancer through early detection of the disease and accurate preoperative assessment of encountered lesions.

• Dr. Rubina Baglio – ‘Liquid biopsy-based immune profiling for cancer patients’ personalized medicine’
  Rubina and co-workers will utilize spectral flow cytometry to measure 40 unique properties in individual immune cells isolated from tumors, bone marrow and blood. The team expects that this analysis together with the immune cell phenotype and metabolic status will yield a trove of information about how the immune systems of cancer patients respond to immunotherapy.