Marjolein Isendoorn

Current treatments for cancer come with side-effects, so precise targeting of therapies can lead to clinical benefit. This can be pursued by generating an immune response specific against the cancer. For this to work, these potentially deadly immune responses must be harnessed for the purpose of the vaccine. In my project, I will try to ‘aim’ the immune-activating weapons to specifically activate the immune system against the tumour. By conjugating Toll-like receptor ligands to molecules specifically expressed by the tumour a self-adjuvating vaccine is obtained. This will lead to the activation of so-called killer T-cells which can – once activated - go in to kill the tumor.