Through the Alpe d’HuZes/KWF Fund, ten new Oncode Institute collaborative research projects will start across the Oncode community. The projects bring together researchers from different fields to explore new ideas in cancer research and accelerate their translation toward future clinical and societal impact, ranging from immunotherapy and early detection to tumor biology and surgical imaging.
From public support to new cancer research
Every year, thousands of people participate in Alpe d’HuZes to raise money for cancer research and quality of life for people affected by cancer. Through the collaboration between Alpe d’HuZes, KWF and Oncode Institute, these contributions directly support new cancer research projects across the Netherlands The fund supports scientific discovery, but also helps promising ideas move faster toward clinical relevance, future application and ultimately greater impact for patients.
Through the Alpe d’HuZes/KWF fund, researchers receive the opportunity to explore new scientific ideas and start collaborations across institutes and research fields.
The ten selected Synergy projects bring together expertise in areas including immunology, imaging, metabolism, genomics and tumor biology. Together, the teams will work on scientific questions that could contribute to better understanding, earlier detection and new treatment strategies for cancer, while creating new opportunities for translation toward diagnostics, therapies and clinical implementation.
By supporting collaborations at an early stage, the Synergy Call also helps bridge the gap between discovery and application. Bringing together complementary expertise increases the potential for promising findings to evolve into future diagnostics, therapies or technologies relevant to patients and healthcare practice.
Connecting society and science
Bertholt Leeftink, Managing Director
Bertholt Leeftink, Managing Director
“Science drives progress, and collaboration helps bring new ideas forward. It is encouraging to see researchers from different institutes working together on these projects and combining their expertise around important questions in cancer research. I wish all teams great success as they further develop these ideas and collaborations.”
Ester Frische, Head of Research and Community
Ester Frische, Head of Research and Community
“The outcome of the first Oncode Researchers Synergy Call makes me incredibly proud. It reflects the strength of collaboration and the support of Alpe d’HuZes and KWF in making these projects possible. Having participated in Alpe d’HuZes myself in 2025, it is especially meaningful to see this effort contribute directly to cancer research.”
The funded projects
The projects reflect the breadth of cancer research across the Oncode community. Each team combines different expertise and approaches to study a shared scientific question.
Decoding Brca1 loss-of-heterozygosity at single-cell resolution: multi-omic dissection of early cancer-promoting states
Researchers from different institutes will study the earliest molecular changes involved in BRCA1-associated cancer development, with the aim of improving early detection and prevention strategies.
Bo Scherer
"The best science happens when people with different skills come together. No single discipline has all the answers. This project could not exist without collaboration and that's what excites me most. Working together makes science better, and the journey more rewarding.”
Tatum van Maanen
“Together with 150+ Oncode researchers, I climbed Alpe d’HuZes for the patients who couldn’t. A promise to keep fighting. This grant lets me turn that climb into impact, improving the lives of hereditary breast cancer patients. And just like on that mountain, we do it together.”
Julia-Star Darnold
“Understanding BRCA1-driven precancer is a scientific uphill climb: challenging, relentless, but deeply purposeful. By combining our novel Brca1 loss-of-heterozygosity tracing mouse model with advanced and unique single-cell approaches, we aim to catch cancer before it begins. This funding turns an uphill battle into a climb worth taking.”
Moritz Bauer
“Pushing the boundaries of single-cell epigenomics often means working in simplified systems to keep the method tractable. Here we get to do something rare: bring a truly cutting-edge multi-omic approach to a biologically urgent question, in primary tissue, with the perfect collaborators to make it work.”
Decoding signaling networks that regulate dysfunctional T-cell states in cancer
This project focuses on understanding why immune cells sometimes lose their ability to attack tumors, with the goal of improving future immunotherapy approaches.
Kaspar Bresser
“There are still many unknowns about defective T cell responses in cancer. This project allows us to investigate an underexplored piece of this puzzle. I look forward to uncovering insights that may help restore T cell function and improve cancer treatment.”
Nila Servaas
“I am excited to address how T cell signaling is rewired in cancer. Applying this new single-cell technique really offers a unique opportunity to move beyond descriptive studies and identify actionable mechanisms underlying T cell dysfunction. Hopefully this will uncover mechanisms that can inform improved immunotherapy for cancer patients.”
Kathy Jastrzebski
“I’m excited to work with the talented team we’ve put together, combining expertise that allows us to apply cutting-edge single-cell technology to understand the intracellular signaling underlying T cell dysfunction. Hopefully, the insights this work uncovers will help improve immunotherapy outcomes for patients.”
Bram Thijssen
“It is exciting to apply a new experimental technique that has been in the works for a long time, to a new relevant problem. We can’t wait to see what it will tell us about dysfunctional T cells.”
Design and validation of small protein probes for pan-cancer fluorescence-guided surgery
Researchers will develop fluorescent probes that could help surgeons distinguish tumor tissue from healthy tissue more clearly during surgery.
Thibault Vantieghem
“Protein design is an innovative and rapidly advancing field, and our project applies it to a real clinical challenge. I am excited to translate molecular design into tools that can directly improve surgical outcomes and benefit patients”
Niels Rinzema
“The opportunity for a fundamental scientist to contribute to such a concrete and relevant tool is inspiring.”
Dissecting cancer cell-macrophage crosstalk in peritoneal metastatic colorectal cancer
The team will investigate how colorectal cancer cells interact with immune cells in metastatic tumors, aiming to identify new ways to improve treatment response.
Dennis Poel
"Given the current gap in detailed protein secretome analysis in the peritoneal cavity, I am confident that this collaborative research will enable us to identify key targets for effective treatment of this devastating disease."
Jinne Pruijs
“In my day-to-day research, I work on mapping cellular interactions in the tumor microenvironment of breast cancer. Being able to apply the methods we optimized to study peritoneal metastases of colorectal cancer is really exciting, especially given the substantial unmet clinical needs of these patients.”
Lila Kondyli
“In my PhD research, I am working on targeted protein degradation strategies in the fight against cancer utilizing interaction and cell-surface proteomics. I am keen to leverage my expertise in this collaborative effort to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the establishment of an immunosuppressive phenotype in peritoneal metastatic colorectal cancer.”
Illuminating super engager T cells: A microscopy study spanning cellular and molecular scales
This collaboration will study a small group of highly effective immune cells to better understand how they recognize and attack tumor cells.
Jessica Mazalo
“This exciting venture will enable us to probe the molecular processes behind an elusive T cell anti-tumour behaviour in a creative and technologically innovative manner. I’m thrilled to be partnering with single molecule imaging expert Megan Farrell to push the boundaries in this new imaging pipeline.”
Megan Farrel
“This small cohort of immune cells hold so much potential as they are primed to be highly effective at killing cancer. I am excited to work together with Jessica Mazalo to understand what makes these cells so special by visualizing them in action using our combined advanced microscopy approaches.”
Metabolic reprogramming as a cell fate switch: How hypoxia drives genome instability
Researchers will investigate how changes in tumor metabolism contribute to genome instability and treatment resistance.
Jurica Matkovic
“Having discovered that a NAD+/NADH redox switch is essential for faithful chromosome segregation, we are excited to transfer this finding to a tumour context. This project allows us to explore how hypoxia driven metabolic rewiring subverts this fundamental regulatory mechanism, directly linking the tumour microenvironment to catastrophic genomic instability.”
Marco Novais-Cruz
“This project brings together complementary expertise to tackle a complex question. I’m particularly excited to connect hypoxia-induced metabolic rewiring with genome integrity. This synergy offers a unique framework to translate fundamental insights into therapeutic strategies that may limit tumor evolution and overcome treatment resistance.”
Obesity-driven Immunity Against Liver Metastases
This project explores how obesity-related changes in the liver influence immune responses against metastatic cancer cells.
Allard van Renterghem
“This support allows us to pursue an unconventional idea: what if obesity, in very specific situations, could be beneficial? And can we harness these insights to redefine how we prevent and treat liver metastases? It encourages us to embrace the diversity of human bodies and challenge preconceived views of health.”
Arjan Bassa
"I’m excited to dissect how immuno-metabolic rewiring in the liver shapes metastatic outcomes. This project uniquely links metabolism to immune function in a clinically relevant case. I hope we will learn something that uncovers new ways to treat or prevent metastases."
Serena Vegna
"This award allows me to open an exciting new research direction: asking whether liver inflammation, which I have long studied as a driver of primary liver cancer, can be redirected to fight metastasis. This is possible thanks to a fantastic team combining preclinical liver cancer models, translational immuno-oncology and metabolism.”
Spatial proteomics of cell death responses - shared pain or neighbourhood gain
The project will study how dying cells communicate with neighbouring cells and how these signals influence tissue responses and cancer treatment.
Tobias Ackerman
“This project will help us build a more complete picture of how different types of cell death affect nearby cells. By uncovering how dying cells communicate, we aim to identify new signaling pathways and better understand their effects on health and disease, especially in the context of cancer.”
Daan van Soest
“This project will help us understand how different types of cell death affect nearby cells in tumors, while also advancing methods to study proteins at the level of individual cells. These methods will be valuable for future cancer research projects.”
TARGET-gd: Defining and therapeutically targeting the x CADM1-CRTAM axis to boost Vδ1 T cell tumor-reactivity
Researchers will investigate how a specific type of immune cell recognizes and attacks tumors, with the aim of improving future cancer immunotherapies.
Gabriel Marsères
“γδ T cells have fascinated me throughout my PhD and postdoctoral work because we still know remarkably little about how they recognize and eliminate tumor cells. With this collaboration, we will be able to combine cutting-edge imaging with cell engineering to turn mechanistic insights into improved γδ T cell therapies.”
Tom Evers
“Developing potent immunotherapies that can treat a wide range of cancers has been a major driving force for me. γδ T cells represent an underexplored but highly promising avenue, and this project allows us to uncover their mechanisms with the ultimate goal of turning them into effective new therapies.”
Time-machine proteomics: mapping proteins interaction throughout different reaction steps of DNA repair
The team will develop new methods to study how cells repair DNA damage caused by chemotherapy, helping researchers better understand treatment responses.
Carlota Davo Martinez
‘I am excited to collaborate and bring DamID-based proximity labelling to the DNA repair field, which will open new possibilities to dissect multistep chromatin-associated processes.’
Dick Zijlmans
“I am excited to apply proximity proteomics to generate a time-resolved map of DNA repair. Capturing proteins at each stage will help us better understand this process and shed light on the cytotoxic effects of chemotherapeutics.”
Marjolein van Sluis
“I am excited to collaboratively study the consecutive of DNA-Protein crosslink repair complexes in time and get a better mechanistic understanding of DNA-Protein crosslink repair induced by chemotherapeutics.”
What comes next
The ten projects will start later this year and will be carried out by researchers across multiple institutes within the Oncode community.
Through the support of Alpe d’HuZes and KW, these collaborations receive the opportunity to explore new scientific ideas and strengthen connections across cancer research.
Explore all project summaries
A full overview of the selected projects, including researcher information and project summaries, is available in the PDF below.