Priscilla Kinderman and Nadine van Montfoort at LUMC contributed their expertise in in vivo virotherapy models, validating our findings in a more complex, physiological setting. This was a truly collaborative effort, and I’m very proud to see it come together!

Laura Horvathova, during her master’s internship in Toos Daemen’s lab, developed a bottom-up in vitro system to precisely control macrophage frequency and phenotype in co-culture with target tumor cells. This enabled real-time tracking of viral infection and multiparametric immune activation.

The model predicted, and our experiments confirmed, that even partial tumor infection was sufficient to activate T cells, despite high macrophage presence.

Using computational modeling with @thijsjanzen.bsky.social & Franjo Weissing), we found that encoding IFN-γ into alphavirus replicons could overcome suppression by macrophage.

Here's the link to access the preprint for those interested

bsky.app/profile/thij...

Thanks for the tag, great to see our preprint being discussed! Any feedback is welcome 👍😄

The collaborative project resulted in a publication on the role of extracellular vesicles in cancer virotherapy, with the mentoring of Luciana Andrade, Roger Chammas, and Toos Daemen. A summary of the project can be read here: c2po.usp.br/researcher-w...

3/3 This work was carried out at the labs of Luciana Andrade and Roger Chammas at @uspoficial.bsky.social in Brazil, and with Toos Daemen in @umcgroningen.bsky.social . 🎉 Shout out to all the coauthors that contributed to a great team effort!

2/3 Key findings:
1. A single-round of infection with a recombinant alphavirus enables EV analysis without extracellular virus interference.
2. Oncolytic virotherapy alters EV cargo, including regulatory microRNAs.
3. EVs from infected cells reduce immune suppression.

🎉 Shout out to our awesome supervisors Franjo Weissing and Toos Daemen for their guidance 🙌, and to Thijs Janzen (@thijsjanzen.bsky.social) for developing this amazing computational model 💻👏.