David van IJzendoorn

LUMC

Kort samengevat, behelst het fellowship met David van IJzendoorn het volgende: 

Every cell counts: understanding leiomyosarcoma subpopulation heterogeneity

'Leiomyosarcoma is a rare cancer with poor five-year survival. There are no accurate predictors for response to conventional chemotherapy modalities, no targeted therapy is available, and immunotherapy has been ineffective. Preliminary data shows that leiomyosarcomas are heterogeneous malignancies, as genomic profiling of multiple regions of primary, recurrent and metastatic tumors from single patients showed extensive intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity.

With the Hanarth Fonds fellowship David van IJzendoorn aims to unravel the extent of the tumor cell heterogeneity on a single cell level, with the goal to identify clinically relevant, subpopulations of cancerous cells and develop new targeted therapies. Leiomyosarcoma samples will be analyzed using advanced single-cell techniques, unsupervised machine learning algorithms will be applied to search for recurrent tumor subpopulations. Subsequently, a machine learning-based analysis will be used to identify targeted therapies for specific subpopulations through drug repurposing. Identified therapies and biomarkers could be rapidly implemented in clinical practice.'