TEFAF Oncology Chair

TEFAF Oncology Chair ~ Let's celebrate the start of this weekend with great news! ~ Professor and Chairwoman Lisa Coussens, cancer biologist at the Department of Cell Development & Cancer Biology, and Associate Director of Basic Research in the Knight Cancer Institute, at Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU), Portland (US) has been appointed as Visiting Professor for the Chair of Oncology in 2019. Since Coussens holds the TEFAF oncology chair at UM this year, two PhD candidates at the GROW research school (which houses Maastricht cancer research), Nicky Beelen and Femke Ehlers, were given the opportunity to travel to her lab for a period of time. ~ The girls try to answer questions such as 'Why is one NK cell effective and another not?' Whereas the UM lab can use three or four colours simultaneously, the lab of Prof. Lisa Coussens in America masters the art of colourings and can use more than twenty simultaneously. That is exactly what Beelen and Ehlers need to improve their research. Ultimately, the two PhD candidates hope to contribute to a form of immunotherapy that is still in its infancy for breast cancer, in which extra active NK cells from a donor are injected into a patient who has breast cancer. Conversely, they bring to the table their knowledge about NK cells, which Portland hopes to benefit from. They will soon leave for America, to advance their research and hopefully the treatment of breast cancer as well. ~ Originally, the idea was to host one doctoral candidate, but the proposals of both Beelen and Ehlers were so well received (!) that they were both selected to go. In October, Ehlers will go for six months and in January Beelen will go for one year to Portland, in the state of Oregon. ~ Photographed from left to right: Professor and Chairwoman Lisa Coussens, Nicky Beelen, Femke Ehlers, Manon van Engeland. ~ TEFAF is proud to support these vital next steps in the research to improve the treatment of breast cancer. ~ #TEFAF #TEFAFCharity #news #greatnews #goodnews #TEFAFOncologyChair #MaastrichtUniversity #workingtogether #phd #research #cancer #curecancer #trearment #improvement #breastcancer #movingforward #proud #supporter