CRIG awards 9 'partnership grants’ in the second call to stimulate interaction between the lab and the clinic
In 2025, CRIG launched the second call for ‘partnership grants’ for duos – consisting of a fundamental/translational researcher & a health care professional – to initiate innovative cancer research projects at CRIG’s partner institution UGent, UZ Gent and VIB-UGent. We are proud to announce that within this 2nd call, 9 partnership grants were granted!
The main purpose of these partnership grants is to stimulate the interaction between the lab and the clinic, and to cross-fertilize fundamental/translational and clinical research. Seed funding (max 50 000 EUR) is provided to create leverage by stimulating and increasing the success rate of future larger project applications, and to maximize chances to build further on the project (e.g. fruitful and durable collaborations that bridge the gap between fundamental research and the clinic, concrete benefit for the patient, increased output, valorization potential, …).
The funding is provided by CRIG, with limited co-funding from vzw Kinderkankerfonds (in the context of its ongoing partnership with CRIG for projects on pediatric oncology). We would like to explicitly thank all donors, organizers of fundraiser actions and supporters, who made this initiative and the projects below possible.
Awarded projects:
Prof. Geert Berx & Prof. Wim Ceelen - 'Uncovering chemotherapy resistance in colorectal peritoneal metastases using sequential biopsies' (49 524 EUR)
Prof. Kathleen Claes & Prof. Karen Geboes - 'BIOPANC: Unlocking Molecular Clues for Early Pancreatic Cancer Detection' (50 000 EUR)
Prof. Karolien De Bosscher & Prof. Anja Geerts - 'The nuclear receptor PPARα and ERRα interactome in hepatocellular carcinoma' (50 000 EUR)
Prof. Lindsey Devisscher & Prof. Hans Van Vlierberghe - 'Modeling the Future: Humanized Mice as Predictive Tools for Personalized HCC Immunotherapy' (50 000 EUR)
Prof. Steven Goossens & Prof. Fritz Offner - 'Optimizing Drug Response Profiling in Lymphoma to Enable Targeted Salvage Therapies' (50 000 EUR)
Prof. Pieter Mestdagh & Dr. Philippe Decruyenaere / Dr. Nicolas Kint - 'Whole-Blood Transcriptomic Signatures to Guide CAR-T Clinical Management' (49 192,32 EUR)
Dr. Karl Vandepoele & Prof. Barbara De Moerloose - 'Next-Gen FLT3-ITD Detection in AML: Fast Diagnosis, Ultra-Sensitive Follow-Up' (50 000 EUR)
Prof. Jo Vandesompele & Prof. Nicolaas Lumen - 'Improving the accuracy of prostate cancer detection using blood plasma cell-free RNA biomarkers' (49 689 EUR)
Prof. Lars Vereecke & Prof. Lieve Brochez - 'Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) to boost immunotherapy response in melanoma (MELIMBOOST-FMT)' (29 779 EUR)
Congratulations to all duos, and we wish them all the best with their exciting partnership projects!
