Research
Tightly linked to the Boston Medical Center (BMC), we ask ourselves fundamental questions such as: How can we improve the quality of patients’ lives? What drives and controls cellular plasticity in development and tumor resistance? How do cells transcriptionally respond to targeted therapies and how can we steer it in the right direction? What is the role of signaling and cell communcation within the (tumor) microenvironment? And how can we ultimately leverage our knowledge to identify better biomarkers or novel therapy strategies?
To answer these questions we make use of state-of-the-art facilities and technologies and apply them directly on primary tumor tissues. Alternatively, we aim to mimick such biological processes using 3D multi-cellular in vitro models, such as (tumor) organoids and spheroids. These systems can then be challenged through genetic engineering and be profiled using a wide-array of genomics and imaging technologies.
We focus on biological processes that control the decision making of an individual (cancer) cell. These processes range from extracelluar cues, such as signaling pathways and cell-to-cell interactions, to intracellular mechanisms that control the cell’s fate and its ability to (de-)differentiate, such as chromatin reorganization and transcriptional processing.
2022
2021
