Speaker

After graduation from Medical School (2004) Marleen Kok did her PhD training at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in the groups of Laura Van ‘t Veer and Sabine Linn focussing on biomarkers for therapy response in breast cancer. She was awarded with a translational research fellowship and Young Investigator Grant of the Dutch Cancer Society. During this fellowship (2015-2019) she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the labs of Ton Schumacher (NKI) and Drew Pardoll/Leisha Emens (Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, USA) studying the anti-cancer immune response in breast cancer and strategies to combine T-cell check point inhibitors with chemotherapy. Since 2016 she works at the Netherlands Cancer Institute as a Breast Medical Oncologist focussing on innovative combination immunotherapy trials of which she is the lead investigator (PI). In addition, she is senior Group Leader in the department of Tumorbiology & Immunology. In order to personalize immunotherapy and de-escalate chemotherapy in the future, she is with her translational research group on a mission to 1) better understand the effect of immune checkpoint blockade in breast cancer patients, 2) find novel immunotherapy combinations, 3) avoid overtreatment for immunogenic breast cancers. She received prestigious funding from the Dutch Research Council (VIDI, 2021) and Victoria’s Secret Global Fund/Peletonia/AACR Rising Innovator Award (AACR, 2023).

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