PROF DR SANDRINE ASPESLAGH

Dr Sandrine Aspeslagh is a medical oncologist and working at the department of medical oncology at UZ Brussel (Brussels, Belgium). Her main interests are immunotherapy, skin cancers (melanoma and spinocellular carcinoma of the skin), urogenital cancers and immune related adverse events.

She obtained her PhD in immunology in 2012 at Ghent University through her work with iNKT cells in cancer models in the lab of Prof Dirk Elewaut (rheumatology). The promising results of anti-CTLA-4 immunotherapy made her choose oncology for further subspecialisation. Since then she has worked for applying successes from immunology research to patients and particularly cancer patients. In 2014, she obtained the Georges Mathé prize for her research in immunotherapy which gave her the opportunity to join the Drug Development Department (DITEP) where she was investigator of several early and late phase trials). Later she moved to Institut Jules Bordet and now she is working at the department of Medical oncology at the UZbrussel. She has been organizing a lot of education on immune-oncology in order to prepare oncologists, GPs and other specialities, scientists and paramedicals for the treating patients with immunotherapy. She is co-author on several publications on immunotherapy and targeted therapy. She supervised the development of the Immunomanager, an online webtool of the BSMO (Belgian Society of Medical Oncology
https://www.bsmo.be/immunomanager/start/) on how to handle immune related adverse events that is freely available to all careproviders. In collaboration with the BSMO she also started the Multidisciplinary Immunotoxicity board (BITOX) in March 2021. Untill now about 200 cases of patients with severe immune related adverse events and an underlying dysimmunity (such as organ transplantation) have been discussed together with organ specialists. Together with her PhD student Marthe she is currently setting up a diet trial, FORX, in order to diminish immune related advents in cancerpatients.