The Erasmus MC is the largest of the eight university medical centres in The Netherlands. The 50 departments contribute to the three core tasks of the Erasmus MC: patient care, research and education. The Erasmus MC has over 1,000 full time equivalent scientific staff. It was formed in 2002 from a merger of the Faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) and the Academic Hospital Rotterdam. Its scientific facilities include common facilities such as Proteomics, Genomics, Bioinformatics while implementation of an (Animal) Imaging Facility, Biobank, GRID computing, Digital Research Archive and BSL3 give scientific research a special incentive (http://www.erasmusmc.nl/research/erasmusmcresearch). The Department of Medical Oncology of the Erasmus MC-Daniel den Hoed Cancer Center Rotterdam has a longstanding tradition in clinical and translational cancer research. The major aim of Translational Cancer Genomics and Proteomics is to investigate the cell biological factors involved in the progression and treatment failure of cancer, in particular ovarian and breast cancer. The research section has a tissue bank containing over 15,000 tumours collected from 1978 onwards, most of them with fully documented follow-up information. It has excellent facilities for advanced high-throughput genomic and proteomic analyses, and has a large panel of well-defined 50 breast- and 40 ovarian cancer cell-lines. The group has a well-recognized track record on gene expression profiling leading to the identification of gene signatures associated with prognosis and response to therapy. All expertise, including quality controlled sample preparation, high throughput transcriptome and proteome analyses as well as bioinformatic data analysis, is available in the laboratories.
Role within the projectErasmus participates in three WPs. It will provide the consortium with PI3K data in cfDNA in sera and plasma and -signatures and pathways and integrated analysis of treatment response profiles.
Description of key people involved in the project![]()
The main goal of the research group is to generate drug response profiles to identify biomarkers and drugable targets in order to improve treatment response. The current research focuses on: A) Characterization of miRNA, mRNA and protein expression profiles, SNPs and mutations, pathways, and histone modifications in predicting treatment outcome. B) In silico and in vitro integrated analysis of treatment response profiles. C) 40 ovarian cancer cell-line studies. The objectives are to characterize the genotype and phenotype of tumors and cell lines and integrate these to obtain expression profiles and pathways associated with drug responses. To assess whether biomarkers are putative drugable targets, functional studies in cell lines are performed.
Expertise key words: biomarker/target discovery, bioinformatics, pathways, integrated genomics, cell line models, miRs, gene expression profiling, drug response, chemo- therapy, PI3K, P53 and prognostic factors.
Website: http://www.erasmusmc.nl/research/over-research/missie_strategie/?lang=en |