The European Research Council (ERC) recently awarded a € 150,000 Proof of Concept Grant to Lorenzo Albertazzi. The grant will be used for translating ongoing research into diagnostic applications that can improve personalized immunotherapy.    

Immunotherapy is a treatment intended to drive a patient's immune system to fight cancer cells. Some tumors can stop immune cells (such as T-cells) in the human body from doing their job, which is to eliminate cancer cells. One way to help T-cells become active again lies in the use of drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors.

These drugs are very powerful and show they can completely eradicate cancer but have a big disadvantage: they only work for forty percent of the patients while the others do not respond and would benefit from other type of treatments. Being able to give the right drug to the right patients is of key importance (personalized medicine).

Lorenzo Albertazzi, associate professor at the department of Biomedical Engineering at TU/e, will investigate ways to better predict whether certain treatments with checkpoint inhibitors will work. This can help doctors in choosing the right treatment for a specific patient.

For his research, Albertazzi uses super-resolution microscopy. This technology uses light-emitting probes to visualize biological processes in living cells, even down to the level of a single molecule, with greater accuracy than with other techniques.

Recently, the European Research Council honored Albertazzi's research proposal with a 150,000 euro Proof of Concept Grant. Scientists conducting groundbreaking research in their field are eligible for this EU grant, which was awarded last week to 55 scientists.

Mira Slothouber (Communication Officer)
m.slothouber@tue.nl