Cancer research is like a game of chess against the tumor: you have to think several moves ahead and come up with better strategies. The brain naturally contains very few immune cells because it’s an extremely delicate organ and shouldn’t be confronted with excessive inflammatory responses. Tumors cleverly exploit this lack of immune activity. Brain tumors like glioblastomas are still among the deadliest forms of cancer, which is what motivated me to work in this field.
I wanted to explore new treatment options to combine with the surgical removal of the tumor. I visited Harvard Medical School in Boston, where I contributed to the development of a hydrogel containing immunotherapy. This approach allows us to deliver immune cells and viruses to the brain that specifically target the tumor. The lab results look promising, so we hope that this strategy will work equally well in patients, although there is still much work to be done. This may eventually make opening the skull obsolete.
I’m going to do something completely different after my PhD: I’ll advise the VU Amsterdam Executive Board on knowledge security and international collaboration.”
Thijs van Schaik will defend his thesis on January 29.
Research at the Netherlands Cancer Institute is financially supported by KWF Dutch Cancer Society and the AVL Foundation.
Wilbert Zwart, Leila Akkari