June

Diether Lambrechts awarded ERC Proof of Concept Grant 

CCB Science Director Diether Lambrechts has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept Grant to advance the development of an off-the-shelf vaccine for triple-negative breast cancer. Entitled TWISTAR, the project will be carried in partnership with myNEO Therapeutics and aims to overcome the current technological limitations of mRNA-based vaccines. 

June

Diether Lambrechts Awarded the 2026 Francqui-Collen Prize

We are proud to announce that Diether Lambrechts has been awarded the 2026 Francqui-Collen Prize, one of Belgium's highest scientific honours, often referred to as the "Belgian Nobel Prize." The award recognizes his groundbreaking research into cancer biology and precision oncology.

May 

Our VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology team proudly took part in Levensloop Leuven, joining the Leuven Kankerinstituut to support the Foundation Against Cancer. Together with patients, supporters, and fellow researchers, we celebrated hope, resilience, and our shared commitment to advancing cancer research.

December

• The lab closed the year in style with a lively Night of the Arts, full of smiles and unforgettable moments.

September

• The whole lab is celebrating Laura's successful PhD defense—congrats on this major achievement!

May

• Cheers to Dr. Francesca Lodi! After a successful PhD defense, we celebrate your hard work and dedication.

December

To wrap up the year in style, the lab came together for a festive Hollywood-themed Christmas party—an evening full of glamour, laughter, and great memories.

November

• We’re excited to welcome Chen to the lab as a new PhD student!

October

• A warm welcome to Xianjie, who joins our team as a new PhD student!
• Congratulations to Heesoo Song and Kaat Vandermaesen on receiving the FWO PhD fellowship!
• Keeping up with our yearly tradition, we enjoyed a lab weekend filled with hiking through scenic woods, dismantling bombs, reflecting on the past year's progress, and indulging in wellness activities.

• Simon Feys defended his PhD thesis!

April

• Laura and team published the first single-cell atlas of penile squamous cell carcinoma in the journal of European Urology!
• Amelie Franken defended her PhD! 

March

• CCB science retreat at the Irish College in Leuven.

• Michel Bila defended his PhD!
• Research from Amelie comparing anti-PD-L1 combined with anti-CTLA4 versus anti-PD-L1 monotherapy in head and neck cancer was published in Immunity! Her artwork was featured on the front cover of this issue! 

January

• The Lancet Microbe publishes Simon and Sam’s research on COVID-19-Associated Pulmonary Aspergillosis!

December

• We celebrated the end of the year with a circus-themed party!

November

• The paper of Sarah on advanced hepatocellular carcinoma was published in Nature Communications! 

October

• Together against cancer

• Liselore Loverix had her public PhD defense.
• We welcome Kaat Vandermaesen, Frederik Peeters & Toon Van de Putte to the team as PhD students after obtaining a master of medicine.

September

• Pierre Van Mol and Sarah Cappuyns defended their PhD.
• We had a lovely lab weekend in Malmedy! We hiked along the river, competed in bubble football and learned archery.

May

• Heesoo Song joins the lab as a PhD student.

December

• Rolling credits on the year: The movie-themed party to celebrate another year at CCB was a success.

October 

• Congratulations to Aurelie Mechels and Elena Donders on receiving the FWO PhD fellowship! 
• Liselore Loverix was interviewed on Kanaalz.knack.be  and talked about HRD as a biomarker of ovarian cancer
• We enjoyed a lovely teambuilding weekend in the Ardennes where we competed in farmer's golf!

April

• Diether Lambrechts received an ERC Advanced grant to develop novel methods to non-invasively detect the response to checkpoint immunotherapy. 
   

May

• Read how 3 PhD students have worked together to make seminal discoveries for the treatment of breast cancer. This is how a PhD should be: fun, social impact, great data and lots of visibility. The story behind the paper
• Multiple articles and national TV about our recent publication ‘A Single-cell Map of Intratumoral Changes during Anti-PD1 Treatment of Patients with Breast Cancer’ (Bassez et al., Nature Medicine 2021)

           - News item on ROB-TV
           - Website UZ Leuven
           - Website VIB

February

• Diether Lambrechts will give a Nature Webinar on "Using single-cell profiling to investigate lung immune responses in mild and critical COVID-19 patients"
  8 February 2021, 6pm CET. More info here
• Article in the newspaper Het Belang van Limburg on the occasion of World Cancer Day

January

• Multiple articles on the findings on the immune reaction in the lungs of severely ill Covid-19 patients:
  - Magazine Knack
  - Newspaper Het Nieuwsblad
  - Newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws
  - Newspaper Het Belang van Limburg

October

• Virtual lab visit...from home! 
  Stichting Tegen Kanker organizes virtual lab visits. Get introduced to the research of the DILA lab focussing on: "Why don't all patients respond to immunotherapy?"
• Congratulations Sarah Cappuyns and Liselore Loverix on receiving the FWO fellowship! 

February

• Diether Lambrechts has received an Agilent Thought Leader Award in support of his research in cancer genomics
• Interview with Diether Lambrechts for the newspaper Het Belang van Limburg
• Based on our research, Biocartis developed a new test that will revolutionize MSI diagnostics and tailor patients to I/O theraty. Not just for colorectal cancer, but for almost any cancer type. We are proud to present the Idylla MSI Test

January

• On January 8th, Thomas became father of two adorable girls - Sam and Cato. Congratulations Thomas!

December

• The Christmas party theme this year was Super Heroes. The group dressed up for the ocasion and enjoyed the nice food and music at the Hoorn
• The group had a fun team builing event that inclued laser tag shooting and escape room activities, folowed by a relaxed dinner and drinks

November

• According to the Web of Science we were ranked among the world’s Highly Cited Researchers in the cross-field category, by Clarivate Analytics, in 2018

October

• Check our latest publications Phenotype molding of stromal cells in the lung tumormicro environment & Copy Number Load predicts Outcome of Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Patients receiving Bevacizumab combination therapy

June

• Tom Venken joined the team as an Omics Data Analysis scientist

May

• We welcome Jieyi Xiong and Rogier Schepers to the lab. Jieyi will work as a postdoctoral research, after completing a PhD in Computational Biology at the Institute of Biological Sciences in Shanghai and Rogier will strengthen the technical team

March

• Raquel Santiago started working as the new assistant of Diether Lambrechts
• Elodie Modave joined the team as an Omics Data Analysis after obtaining her PhD in Wildlife Genetics Cellular Life Sciences, in the University of Canberra, Australia 

January

• Flora D'Anna had the public defence of her doctoral thesis, entitled “The two-way interaction between tumour hypoxia and DNA methylation”, on January 12th
• Ayse Bassez joined the lab after obtaining a Master in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Ghent. During the PhD, Ayse will focus on the project entitled Single-cell RNA-sequencing in the context of space and time to interrogate tumour microenvironment (TME) impact on therapy response