Sara De Brée
Doctoral fellow – Cell Death Investigation and Therapy Laboratory, Department of Human Structure and Repair, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, UGent
Principal investigator: prof. Dmitri Krysko (MD, PhD)
Research focus
Gliomas are the most prevalent type of primary tumor in the central nervous system and are associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Because of the tumor heterogeneity in gliomas, they are challenging to treat. In order to tackle this tumor metastasis, we want to arm the immune system to kill the cancer cells by inducing immunogenic cell death (ICD). ICD is a form of cancer cell death that activates the immune system, thereby potentially enhancing treatment efficacy and offering long-term protection against cancer. Our research wants to couple dendritic cells (DCs) to ICD in order to establish a therapeutic vaccine. DCs are key to initiating and directing immune responses and are the primary cell types involved in antigen presentation and T-cell activation in anti-cancer immunity. Therefore, DCs are widely used in the cancer immunotherapy as DC vaccine. My research focuses on optimizing DC vaccination against glioma by developing novel nano-formulations for encapsulating ferroptotic lysates to enhance their immunogenicity by using intracranial orthotopic injection in mice and patient samples. With this research we aim to advance DC-based immunotherapeutic strategies to address the urgent need for effective glioblastoma therapies.
Biography
Sara obtained a Master of Science in Molecular Biology Magna Cum Laude in 2024 at the Free University of Brussels VUB (Belgium). During the master (2023), Sara got selected as an intern to perform research on zebrafish and live imaging in RIKEN BDR (Kobe, Japan). She conducted her master’s dissertation at Laboratory for Medical and Molecular Oncology (LMMO) under supervision of Prof. Ilse Rooman and Dr. Ken Matsumoto.
She started a PhD in the Cell Death Investigation and Therapy Laboratory (Ghent, Belgium) under the supervision of prof. Dmitri Krysko (MD, PhD) in December 2024.
Contact & links
- Lab address: Corneel Heymanslaan 10, entrance 46, 4B3, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
- Cell Death Investigation and Therapy Laboratory
- Sara De Brée is interested to receive invitations for presentations or talks