Simone Dalm

How can prostate cancer treatment with radioactive substances be made more effective and safer? This is what the 2022 Daniel den Hoed Award winner, Dr. Simone Dalm, and her team at Erasmus MC will be investigating.

Nowadays, it is also possible to treat prostate cancer patients with the same radioactive substance (with minimal modifications). In this case, patients with prostate cancer receive, in addition to chemotherapy and/or hormone therapy, a therapy called radionuclide therapy. Doctors use a single substance that both visualizes and treats the tumors. This type of method is also called theranostics.

With the grant Simone receives, she plans to investigate how different radioactive substances can be combined with the aim of making prostate cancer treatment with theranostics more effective and safer.

Sophie Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Dr Sophie Veldhuijzen van Zanten holds a doctorate in training to become a specialist in Radiology & Nuclear Medicine. Veldhuijzen van Zanten has been awarded the Daniel den Hoed Award 2021 for her research into improving the treatment of patients with brain tumors.

“With the Daniel den Hoed Award I want to perform a first proof of concept study to confirm the potential of a treatment with Ac-PSMA in patients with progressive/recurrent glioma. This new, minimally invasive treatment option may have a positive impact on survival and quality of life, especially for patients with brain tumors, for whom treatment options have been limited or very drastic. ”

It has recently been shown that this principle leads to a reduction in pain and tumor size in patients with prostate cancer, with few side effects. This technique is not yet used anywhere in the world for patients with brain tumors.

Jos Elbers

Dr Jos Elbers is a radiotherapist-oncologist specializing in head and neck cancer. Elbers has received the Daniel den Hoed Award 2021 for his research proposal into a new radiation treatment to improve the survival chances of patients with head and neck cancer.

Survival rates after radiotherapy for head and neck cancer are poor. There is some evidence that survival rates can be improved by adding immunotherapy to radiotherapy treatment. However, radiotherapy also has negative effects on the immune system. The optimal balance between a stimulating and inhibitory effect of radiation, in combination with immunotherapy, has yet to be found. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that it is safe to, and the immune system can best be spared, by, (1) increasing the radiation dose at a time which can reduce the number of radiations, (2) varying the radiation dose divide and (3) irradiate with protons instead of photons. This modified treatment consists of only 20 radiation treatments, instead of the standard treatment of 35 radiation treatments.

This study is therefore an important first step towards new immuno-radiotherapy combinations to improve the survival rates of patients with head and neck cancer.

Emrah Balcioglu

Dr Emrah Balcioglu has received the Daniel den Hoed Award in 2020. The 2020 award is all about fundamental research. Dr Balcioglu works in the tumor immunology lab. With this award he can proceed with his research ‘Use of 3D models of cancer and immune cells for real time monitoring of the interaction’.

By using an innovative 3D model consisting of cancer cells and immune cells of patients, Dr Balcioglu wants to monitor the infiltration of immune cells in the tumor, their stay and the anti tumor activity in real time. This research gives insight in the direct interaction between the tumor cell and the immune cell, with a purpose to develop new ways of making tumors sensitive to immune therapy.

Balcioglu: “It is an acknowledgement of my work to have received the Daniel den Hoed Award. But more importantly, it gives me the opportunity to make important steps in the improvement of the treatment of patients with cancer.”

Stijn Keereweer

Stijn Keereweer is head and neck surgeon and a young, talented researcher at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute.

“As head and neck surgeon I see daily the devastating effect that head and neck cancer has on patients and their surroundings. The only factor that I as a surgeon can influence is to remove the tumor as well and complete as possible, while keeping as much as the functionality and cosmetics of the head-neck area”, according to Stijn.

Thanks to the award, Stijn can research a new innovative combination of two optic techniques (fluorescence guided surgery and Raman spectroscopy) that allows surgeons to be better able to remove oral cavity tumors completely during the surgery.

Jurjen Versluis

Jurjen Versluis is internist-hematologist and connected to the department of Hematology of the Erasmus MC. He promoted cum laude in 2017 at the Erasmus University on the topic: “Allogeneic stem cell transplantation at patients with acute myeoloid leukemia – a focused approach”.

With the budget of the Daniel den Hoed Award he continues his research to the application of allogeneic stem cell transplantation at older patients. Dr Versluis is going to develop an innovative and complex risk model to better inform physicians and patients about the treatment options during the intensive process of an older acute myeloid leukemia patient.

Astrid van der Veldt

In 2018 the Daniel den Hoed Award is awarded to Dr Astrid van der Veldt, internist-oncologist. Dr Van der Veldt’s project mostly concerns metastasis of cancer in the brain.

New treatments such as immune therapy have greatly improved the prospects of patients with advanced melanoma, but difficult to treat metastasis in the brain is an increasing problem. In Dr Van der Veldt’s project new imaging techniques are developed to better detect metastasis in the brain. A second goal is to better understand the failure of treatments so future treatments of these mostly fatal metastasis will be more effective.

Nitika Taneja

Dr Nitika Taneja is senior researcher at the Molecular Genetics department at the Erasmus MC. With the help of the Daniel den Hoed Award she started her research in 2018: “Chromatine ‘remodelers’ clear the road to new treatments with chemotherapy”.

“The most important goal that we as a laboratory strive for is to find new and better therapies for cancer patients. We do this by studying and editing factors who are often mutated (changed) in cancer cells. My group has made great progress in the search of chromatine reforming routes. These chromatine reformers can be an important point of engagement for new cancer therapies”, according to Dr. Taneja.

Julie Nonnekens

Julie Nonnekens researches the underlying mechanisms of radioactive treatment of cancer. With her expertise on DNA-damage and anti cancer therapies she bridges fundamental research in the lab with a clinical application.

“Nothing is as complex as the human body”, according to Julie Nonnekens.

With the Daniel den Hoed Award she will research the effects of anti cancer therapy in cancer and healthy cells.

Leonie Smeenk

Leonie Smeenk was the second recipient of the Daniel den Hoed Award in 2016. Leonie is postdoctoral researcher at the Erasmus MC. With the award she will research mistakes in the DNA with leukemia.

Hans Hofland

In 2015 Dr Hans Hofland won the Daniel den Hoed Award for his promising research ‘Quest for the role of different steroid hormones and their receptors in the growth of prostate cancer’. 

He researches which hormones are potentially involved with the development and growth of prostate cancer. Long term goal is to offer men with prostate cancer a targeted individual treatment.

Rute Marques

Rute Marques won de Daniel den Hoed Award in 2014 for her research ‘New ways to increase the effectiveness of PI3 kinase therapy with prostate cancer‘. Rute Marques has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Erasmus MC since 2011.

Qiuwei Pan

Qiuwei Pan was one of two winners of the Daniel den Hoed Award in 2014.

With the award he can continue his research ‘The search for the origin of liver cancer‘. By involving the most modern molecular and cell biology, his research wants to add to the understanding of virus-host interactions, the development of new antiviral therapies and how hepatitis viruses cause liver carcinogenesis.