ERC-Consolidator Grant for Jacco van Rheenen!

With great pride we announce that the European Research Council (ERC) awarded a very prestigious ERC-Consolidator Grant to Prof. dr. Jacco van Rheenen of the Hubrecht Institute.

Van Rheenen receives 2 million euro for the next 5 years to further strengthen his research team and work out their innovative ideas. Of the 2528 scientists that applied, only 372 received the grant. A fantastic achievement! Van Rheenen received the grant for his proposal ‘Cancer Recurrence: Tumor cell death supports recurrence of cancer’.

The proposal
The aim of this proposal is to gain fundamental insights on how induction of tumor cell death, the universal aim of therapy, could play a role in growth and spread of surviving tumor cells. Current anti-cancer treatments are often inefficient, while many patients initially benefit from anti-cancer drugs eventually experience relapse of resistant tumors throughout the body. Current clinical strategies mainly aim at inducing tumor cell death, but this induction may have serious unintentional and unwanted side effects on surviving tumor cells. The aim of Van Rheenen is to identify the key cell types and mechanisms that mediate this effect, and establish whether interference with these cells and mechanisms can reduce recurrence of tumors after chemotherapy.

The ERC
The European Research Council (ERC) grants support individual researchers of any nationality and age who wish to pursue their frontier research. The ERC encourages in particular proposals that cross disciplinary boundaries, pioneering ideas that address new and emerging fields and applications that introduce unconventional, innovative approaches.