Jolien De Munck

Short overview of the academic career
-    Graduated at VUB as a bio-engineer, cell and gene biotechnology: medical biotechnology
-    Gained experience at the lab for Molecular Signaling and Cell Death
(VIB Reseach Group – Inflammation Research Center (ICR-UGhent)
-    PhD student & teaching assistent at NAVI (VUB) from October 2015 under supervision of prof. Joeri Aerts 

Background information
Despite the fact that our knowledge about mechanisms responsible for cancer had enormously increased over the last decades, this has not been translated into a significant impact on mortality of cancer patients. Before, cancer treatment was solely based on therapies such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but since a couple of years, immunotherapy is getting into the picture. Oncolytic viruses (OVs), a special type of immunotherapy, are designed to replicate selectively within infected cancer cells, and cause cell death leading to the release of mature virions that then subsequently can infect neighbouring cells. Although direct lysis of tumor cells by OVs will contribute to overall anti-tumor effect, there is mounting evidence that targeted infection of tumor cells with OVs has the potential to generate potent antitumor immune responses, both innate and adaptive. Although the molecular and cellular mechanisms resulting in the stimulation of the immune system are not yet fully known, it is highly likely that the mode of inducing tumor cell death is an important contributing factor. While OVs will certainly lower tumor burden, it remains to be addressed experimentally whether the immune response elicited by OVs is sufficient to improve other therapies like the delivery of DCs to enhance the magnitude of the immune response.

The objective of my PhD research is to study the role of and the interactions between the immune system and (immunogenic) cell death of melanoma after treatment with HSV-1 derived oncolytic viruses, whether or not combined with other promising therapies (e.g. dendritic cells).