Dr. John Haanen, staff member at the Division of Medical Oncology and the Division of Immunology at the NKI-AVL has been appointed as professor of Translational Immunotherapy of Cancer at Leiden University on behalf of the Association of the Netherlands Cancer Insitute, effective October 1.
John Haanen is a medical oncologist who devotes half his time to the hospital and half to research at the NKI. He aims to find novel therapies that harness the ability of the immune system to fight cancer.
One focus of the research of John Haanen is on DNA vaccination. This is a new, promising therapy that is mainly aimed at cancer types in which the human papilloma virus is involved, like head and neck tumors, cervixcarcinoma and peniscarcinoma. Another research interest of John Haanen is adoptive T cell therapy. This therapy is mainly used to treat patients with metastasized melanoma.
His research should lead to improved and increased translational immunotherapy in both the NKI-AVL and the LUMC.