John Martens, moleculair bioloog, ErasmusMC Rotterdam

Samenvatting:
Liquid biopsies are an innovative type of diagnostic with the advantage of being minimally invasive allowing for repeated sampling. The lecture will discuss the type of liquid biopsy assays that are available and their pro- and cons as well as present an application in the SONIA trial in which the clincial value of baseline levels as well as ctDNA dynamics after the start of first line therapy is illustrated.

Biografie:
John Martens studied (1982-1988) and received his PhD (1994) at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. After being a post-doc in Molecular Endocrinology at Erasmus university and USCF (1994-2001), he specialized on translational cancer genomics research (full professor since 2017) in the Dept. of Medical Oncology at the Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His ambition (i) to discover new prognostic and predictive markers for breast and colorectal cancer and (ii) to gain insight into the different molecular mechanisms underlying disease heterogeneity and associated treatment resistance, ultimately to offer patients the best choice of treatment possible.