Tackling Important Questions in Oncology by Translating Genome-Scale Data Sets Into Clinically Applicable Knowledge

Diether Lambrechts is group leader at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology and Professor at KU Leuven. He was trained as an engineer at KU Leuven and worked under Peter Carmeliet on the role of vascular endothelial growth factor in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for his PhD and postdoc until 2007. Subsequently, he left Belgium to work at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford, before joining VIB as an independent group leader.

Diether Lambrechts has won three Belgian awards: the Karel-Lodewijk Award for Human Medicine, the Galenus Prize for Pharmacology and the AstraZeneca Award for Translational Research. The expertise of his Laboratory for Translational Genetics is focused on tackling important questions in oncology by translating genome-scale data sets into clinically applicable knowledge. Investigations are based on the application of cutting-edge sequencing technologies and bioinformatics, and on the seamless integration of genomic data sets with clinical and fundamental biological information to generate novel insights and potent biomarkers for the field of oncology.

Since 2015, Lambrechts also acts as director of the VIB Cancer Program in Leuven.