Cancer is the most important cause of death in the Netherlands. We aim to develop an efficient cancer vaccine that is off-the-shelf and can be used in many cancer types and patients. For this we will generate a protein vaccine that consist of a nanobody to deliver the vaccine more efficiently to immune cells that will instruct the killer T cells to attack cancer cells. In addition, we will incorporate cancer antigens that are expressed in many cancer types and that have been shown to elicit immune responses.

Vaccines are training programs for our immune system and are currently only effective to fight infectious diseases but insufficient for cancer therapy. The reason is because they are not directly delivered to the right part of the immune system—the ‘teacher cells’—which are essential for activating cancer-killing T cells. We are developing a nanobody-based technology to deliver vaccines directly to ‘teacher cells’ to increase vaccine effectiveness. This smart vaccine will lead to a stronger immune response against cancer.

We use specific determinant of cancer cells (antigen) to design a cancer vaccin. We study the side products of bacteria that are used to produce these antigens, so called protein bodies (PBs), that contain largely misfolded forms of the overexpressed recombinant protein. These PBs have the potency to trigger a strong immune response and are therefore a potential candidate to be used as effective vaccine. We design these cancer vaccines by incorporating cancer epitopes in the PB platform. Preliminary work shows that these therapeutic vaccines are very effective in eradicating the tumor. Mechanism of action is currently studied.

Surgical resection of colorectal cancer is the only treatment available to provide long-term survival in patients. Still, approximately 30-50% of patients develop liver metastases post-surgically. Paradoxically, surgery even enhances this risk. I aim to identify the mechanisms involved, as this will lead to new therapeutic strategies to improve patient outcome.

As our average lifespan increases, so does the prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), which at present cannot be treated. Intriguingly, a small subset of the human population reaches an extraordinary advanced age (>100yrs) without substantial cognitive deficits, despite substantial presence of the pathological signs of AD in their brains. In this study, the researchers will use a powerful new technique called imaging mass cytometry to analyze whether microglia, the immune cells of the brain, are involved in this remarkable protection from developing dementia in these so-called centenarians. Thereby, the researchers hope to find new leads for developing AD therapies.