Projects

My research project continues on the work of my co-promotor, Dr. Els Van Nieuwenhuysen. She has already characterized rare ovarian tumors on DNA-level. Little is known today on these types of tumors. The approach is to deepdive into these groups of tumors (of which the bio-bank has already been established during my co-promoter's previous research) on RNA-level, methylation and histone modification. Furthermore, we try to look further into ...

Ovarian cancer is a silent killer, metastasizing troughout the abdomen before causing symptoms. A total of 80% of patients will die of the disease. Survival can be ameliorated by screening, improving diagnosis or improving treatment. research so far has invested in optimizing treatment resulting in an increase in overall survival from 18 to 44 months over the last 20 years. Screening has been proven no to be beneficial. optimizing the ...

Cancer is a genetic disease. Genetic changes or mutations that alter the function of genes, can provide a cell with a selective growth advantage compared to its surrounding cells. Next-generation sequencing is revolutionizing the characterization of these (epi)genetic alterations and is gaining influence on therapy choice and prediction of prognosis. This manuscript describes the results and interpretations derived of genetic ...

Excellent tools to predict whether a detected ovarian tumour is benign or malignant prior to surgery are pivotal for several reasons: (1) currently a minority of ovarian cancers is treated by experienced gynaecological oncologists, (2) the value of screening for ovarian cancer has not been established, and (3) ovarian cancer is largely asymptomatic in its early stages such that accurate diagnosis is paramount to optimize survival. The ...

Ovarian cancer is a silent killer. Early stage ovarian cancer is difficult to diagnose because most symptoms are subtle and thus of little use in diagnosis. As a result, the diagnosis is rarely made until the cancer spreads and advances to later stages. If diagnosed and treated in an early stage, ovarian cancer is often curable. However, when diagnosed in a late clinical stage, ovarian cancer is associated with a 5-year survival of only 35%. ...

Ovarian cancer is the second most important pelvic tumor with limited treatment options in case of relapsing tumors, leading to a poor prognosis. New therapies are needed. Earlier, we developed dendritic cell (DC) immunotherapy for uterine cancers, based on the tumorassociated antigen (TAA) Wilms’ tumor gene 1 (WT1). DCs were produced in the laboratory starting from regular white blood cells from a patient. These DCs were loaded with WT1 in ...

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal gyncaecological malignancy causing 41900 deaths annually in Europe. The predominance of aggressive Type II tumours, which are characterised by a high frequency of p53 mutations, and primary or acquired resistance to platinum-based chemotherapy profoundly contribute to the high mortality rate. With current standard therapy the median overall survival of metastatic platinum-resistant (Pt-R) ...