CRIG grant laureates 2021
Every year, CRIG awards about ten research grants for young postdoctoral researchers to initiate potentially high-risk and innovative cancer research projects (partially supported by vzw Kinderkankerfonds). Since these grants are financed for a large part by donations and actions, we find it important to be transparent and to show where the funding goes to. Therefore, we make short educational movies about the research projects of the CRIG laureates. Check out this page regularly to discover new movies!
Prof. Jonathan Maelfait and his team want to use our defense mechanism against viruses to destroy cancer cells.
Dr. Francisco Avila Cobos is a bioinformatician in the group of Prof. Mestdagh and uses (super)computer power to predict whether a patient will respond to immunotherapy or not. He introduces the concept of his project by making the comparison with chocolate pralines.
Dr. Charlotte Verroken is a researcher at the Department of Endocrinology at UZ Gent. As in a subgroup of patients with iodine-refractory thyroid carcinomas (RAI-RTC), standard PET tracers fail to identify recurring disease or associated metastases, Charlotte investigates whether an 18F-PSMA PET tracer can answer this unmet clinical need.
In her project, Dr. Celine Everaert (promotors : Prof. Katleen De Preter & Prof. Karim Vermaelen) tries to develop a new method to identify immunotherapy responders based on the epigenetic signatures present in patients' immune cells. What? Why? How?
Dr. C. J. Anderson (promotor of the grant: Prof. Kodi Ravichandran) investigates how bacteria feast on dying cells, and how this process contributes to the nasty side effects of chemotherapy.
Dr. Sophie Van Welden (from the group of Prof. Lindsey Devisscher) investigates how molecular oxygen sensors influence the respons to immune therapy in colorectal cancer patients.