Fundamental research

1. Prostate cancer
A. To discriminate between indolent, slow growing tumours and aggressive, metastasising cancer there is an urgent need to develop better, prognostic markers for prostate cancer. Therefore one project aims on the development of a marker combination for early detection of high risk prostate cancer. A number of markers is actively screened (project by dr. I. Bijnsdorp) using immunohistochemical techniques on archival paraffin tissue.

B. Another project focuses on the prospects and mechanisms of immunotherapy using intratumoral IL2 injection. The therapeutic effects of combining IL2 with other inroads to mount an effective and specific immunity towards prostate cancer is investigated in an in vivo Dunning tumour model. Related to this project is the concept of a clinical study involving application of IL-2 in bladder cancer patients (by prof. dr. W. den Otter). 

C. The exact influence of tissue concentrations of androgenic steroids on prostatic cell  biology and clinical behaviour (hyperplasia as well as neoplasia) is the subject of a project using a tandem-MS technique in clinical and experimental tumour samples (project by drs. TM van der Sluis).