Drs. Amber Blaauboer
Amber Blaauboer began her PhD on 1 November 2016. In the Neuroendocrinology Laboratory, under Professors Leo Hofland and Casper van Eijck, she studies the effect of interferon beta on pancreatic cancer. She maintains four tumour-cell lines and tests how their growth responds to interferon beta combined with chemotherapy.
Interferon beta is produced naturally during a viral infection and activates the immune system. It is already used to influence immune responses in conditions including hepatitis, multiple sclerosis and skin cancer. Pancreatic tumours can evade immune recognition and continue growing unchecked, so researchers want to discover whether interferon beta can restore part of that response.
As well as activating the immune system, interferon beta may inhibit tumour growth directly and make cancer cells more sensitive to chemotherapy. Because pancreatic cancer often responds poorly to chemotherapy, the study aims to determine whether interferon beta can prevent or overcome treatment resistance.
The initial work tested interferon beta on tumour cells in the laboratory. After eighteen months, the in-vitro phase was nearly complete and the next step was testing in in-vivo models—the final research stage before a potential patient study. The hope is that the treatment will help more people with pancreatic cancer respond to chemotherapy.
This project forms one part of a much broader programme to develop new treatments. It helps answer why one patient responds while another does not, which cells determine that difference and how treatment might be selected more precisely for each person.
My work cannot yet help people who are receiving treatment today, but I hope it will improve care in future. There are still very few alternatives to current chemotherapy, which is why positive results from this study would be so valuable.