Julie Braet

CRIG member
Julie Braet


Doctoral fellow – Thoracic Tumor Immunology Laboratory – UGent (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences)
Principal investigator: prof. Karim Vermaelen (MD, PhD)

 

Research focus

The Thoracic Tumor Immunology Laboratory integrates fundamental, translational and clinical research in the immunology and immunotherapy of thoracic tumors such as lung cancer, still the number one cancer killer in Flanders and worldwide. More specifically, we investigate the interactions between lung cancer and the immune system, with a special focus on dendritic cells (DCs). DCs function as important sentinels by sampling the environment for danger signals and cancer antigens and subsequently alerting T-lymphocytes to mount an adequate immune response against the tumor. However, tumors can corrupt the function of DCs in order to escape immune control. The lab is currently exploring the therapeutic potential of immunostimulatory DCs, generated ex vivo from patient blood as a vaccine regimen in ongoing clinical trials.
My research at the Tumor Immunology lab will now exploit our knowledge on DC biology on top of the expertise in RNA vector design combined with in vitro and in vivo immunological readouts in order to design a novel mRNA vector for use in our next-generation DC vaccine.
 

Contact & links

  • Lab address: MRB2 2nd floor, Ghent University Hospital, Corneel Heymanslaan 10, 9000 Ghent
  • LinkedIn
  • Julie Braet is interested to receive invitations for presentations or talks