Another project that can now come to fruition will take us one crucial step closer to precision immunotherapy for breast cancer patients. A small number of patients with a hard to treat type of tumor (triple negative) appears to benefit from immunotherapy treatment in combination with chemotherapy. "We know very little about ways to identify these individual patients, and what kinds of chemotherapy works best in combination with the immunotherapy," medical oncologist Marleen Kok explains. "Previous research shows that the interaction between breast cancer cells and certain immune cells, myeloid cells, may play a vital role. We will use this Dutch Cancer Society grant to study this interaction in approximately 250 patients receiving treatment with immunotherapy and two types of chemotherapy in the Netherlands."
Research into the treatment of brain tumors will now also be able to progress. Patients with brain tumors are often confronted with bad prognoses and little chance of recovery. New, improved treatment is essential. A research team led by Olaf van Tellingen, Leila Akkari, and Mark de Gooijer is currently working on the development of new treatments for glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor with which approximately 800 adults are diagnosed in the Netherlands every year. De Gooijer: "We have discovered new combinations of drugs that force the glioblastoma cells to permanently stop dividing. We will now be able to look into the most effective drug combinations that are most likely to permanently halt cell division in our patients." The research team expects their research to eventually lead to a clinical patient study.
Overview of Netherlands Cancer Institute’s grant applications that have been awarded funding by the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF Kankerbestrijding)
| Project leader |
Research project |
Funding in euros |
| Annemieke Cats |
Request for additional funding of the Alpe d’Huzes KWF project number NKI 2013 - 6249 |
197.800 |
| Olaf van Tellingen |
Multi-target combination therapy (MTCT) targeting PI3K, MAPK and CDK4/6-Rb pathways for treatment of glioblastoma |
660.076 |
| Wouter Scheper |
Deep profiling of T cell reactivity against cancer for improved immunotherapy |
604.348 |
| Ivo Schoots |
PROCESS study: PROstate Cancer - Expansion of Surveillance Selection criteria with MR imaging |
503.540 |
| Marleen Kok |
Improving immune checkpoint blockade for advanced triple negative breast cancer patients |
614.279 |
| Koen Hartemink |
A comparison of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy versus minimally invasive lobectomy for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer |
160.597 |
| Jos Jonkers |
Functional validation of somatic variants of unknown significance in clinically actionable kinases |
556.812 |
| Wim Groen |
(Cost-)EffectiveNess of a multimodal preHAbilitation program in patients with muscle iNvasive bladder canCEr. The ENHANCE randomized controlled tria |
688.355 |
| Titia Sixma |
Structural analysis of individual PRC1 complexes to enable selective drug discovery
|
650.867
|