News

Faculty Research Day, Research symposium and Neuroblastoma UK

The past 7 days proved busy for the CCGG lab. Our 3 medical master students presented a poster on their sampling efforts at the Faculty Research Day. The next day, Peter Merseburger presented his research on spatial transciptomics in neuroblastoma at the 6th Neuroblastome Research Symposium held in Cambridge. Not to be outdone, Joachim Siaw clinched the poster prize at  the Research Symposium organized by the UGent department of Human Structure and Repair.

  Mar 27, 2024

  Tom Luijts

Preclinical exploration of the DNA damage response pathway using the interactive neuroblastoma cell line explorer CLEAN

The Cell Line Explorer App for Neuroblastoma (CLEAN) is now publicly accessible. Jonatan Gabre and colleagues made an interactive web application to facilitate neuroblastoma (NB) research. We aim to make all published NB RNA-Seq and phosphoproteomic dataset readily and easily available for anyone in the field.

  Dec 28, 2023

  Jonatan Gabre

Dr. Arne Claeys

On December 12th, Dr. Claeys did his public PhD defence in front of an audience of experts, family, friends and colleagues. He presented his combined research efforts on the computational exploration of MHC-based immune selection signals in large cancer genome sequencing datasets. At the end of the evening, he rightfully earned the title 'doctor in health sciences'. Congratulations Dr. Claeys!

  Dec 12, 2023

  Ghent, Belgium

  Tom Luijts

EMBL Cancer Genomics Conference

All lab members attended the 2023 EMBL Cancer Genomics Conference in at the EMBL Advanced Training Centre in Heidelberg. During the event, we participated with 5 different posters, among which the poster of Arne Claeys earned the prestigious poster award! The diverse array of speakers and posters that provided state-of-the-art and often unpublished insights, gave us valuable new ideas and inspiration to apply in our own research.

  Nov 15-17, 2023

  Heidelberg, Germany

  Tom Luijts

Brussels Ekiden 2023

The lab participated in the Brussels Ekiden marathon of 2023. We finished the 42 km relay race at an impressive 122th out of 872 teams.

  Okt 21, 2023

  Brussels, Belgium

  Tom Luijts

Twenty-five percent of primary and metastatic tumors have evaded the immune system

Recent work from the Cuppen lab demonstrated that genetic immune escape is present in minimally 25% of tumors and loss of the HLA allele is the main mechanism. Prof. Jimmy Van den Eynden put these results into perspective in a Nature Genetics News and Views article.

  May 10, 2023

  Tom Luijts

New recommendations for MHC genotyping

Arne Claeys and colleagues published an extensive and complete benchmarking study on MHC genotyping from NGS data. We currently recommend Optitype and HLA-HD for MHC class I and class II genotyping from NGS data, respectively.

  May 9, 2023

  Tom Luijts

Oncopoint 2023

The CCGG lab joined the yearly CRIG PrIOMiC-OncoPoint symposium in 2023. This year, we participated with 3 posters made by Arne Claeys, Jonatan Gabre and Joachim Siaw and a 2-minute poster pitch by Arne.

  May 3-4, 2023

  Het Pand, Ghent, Belgium

  Tom Luijts

HLA affinity-based selection signals are easy misinterpreted

In a Letter to The Editor of Cancer Research we demonstrated that previously perceived immunoediting signals are false.
Our main concerns:

  1. When neoantigen predictions are solely based on HLA affinities, the very low prediction accuracy makes every immunoediting signal extremely unlikely.
  2. Proteins translated from non-expressed genes have stronger average HLA affinities. This is not selection but simple biochemistry!
  3. Naïve data filtering = asking for problems. When only 10% of mutations are neoantigenic, removing samples without these mutations is problematic in tumors with low TMB.

  Mar 15, 2023

  Tom Luijts

Dr. Joachim Siaw awarded CRIG Proof-Of-Concept grant

Congratulations to Dr. Joachim Siaw for receiving the CRIG Young Investigator Proof-of-Concept Project Grant for his research project. This will allow him to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of RUVBL1/2 inhibition in neuroblastoma mice models and determine the spatial signaling dynamics in the tumor microenvironment.

  March 24, 2023

  Tom Luijts

We published in PNAS!

In a collaborative effort between the CCGG Lab and the Palmer/Hallberg lab at Gothenburg University, we could identify isoform-specific as well as common downstream effects of four common ALK-fusion proteins known to play an important role in NSCLC. Please read our paper for more details!

  Feb 27, 2023

  Jonatan Gabre

New funding for CCGG lab

Our lab received new research funding from FWO, STK and AG fond for our neuroblastoma research and from CRIG for our research on mutant clones in normal tissues.

  Dec 19, 2022

  Ghent, Belgium

  Tom Luijts

CCGG @ NBCNS 2022

Four of our lab member attended the thirteenth Neuroblastoma and CNS (NBCNS) meeting in Gothenburg. 

  Nov 8, 2022

  Gothenburg, Sweden

  Tom Luijts

Welcome Sofie! 

On October 1st, we welcome our newest colleague, Sofie Hoogstoel, to the lab.

  Oct 1, 2022

  Ghent, Belgium

  Tom Luijts

Lab BBQ 2022

This September, Jimmy treated the lab to the yearly lab BBQ at his home.

  Sep 2, 2022

  Tom Luijts

Oncopiont Symposium 2022

In May 2022, the lab joined the yearly Oncopoint symposium organised by CRIG. Tom had the opportunity to present his work on normal tissue clonality during a 10-minute presentation.

  May 23, 2022

  Sint-Pietersabdij, Ghent, Belgium

  Tom Luijts

GE research meeting 2022

In March 2022, the lab was present at the research meeting of the faculty of medicine and health sciences at Ghent University. Both Joachim and Jonatan gave presentations and Arne could show his poster.

  Mar 31, 2022

  Ghent, Belgium

  Tom Luijts