Academish Ziekenhuis Maastricht

Hematology department, Maastricht University Hospital

In the subdivision of hematology (head Prof Schouten), dept. of internal medicine (head Prof Stehouwer), patient care for all patients with hematological disease is taken care of. This includes intensive chemotherapy, autologous bone marrow stem cell transplantation as well as donor stem cell transplantation from related or unrelated donors. The hematology group is referral center for the region of Limburg in the Netherlands as well as parts of the region of Brabant. A collaboration with the Klinikum in Aachen on patient care does exist for several years as well as with the department of hematology in Liege.

Within the group pre-clinical and translational research has a focus on immunotherapy. This includes the field of donor bone marrow stem cell transplantation as well as autologous immunotherapy by vaccine development, making use of dendritic cells as tumor antigen presenting cells.

Apart from hematological diseases the group also focuses on solid tumors, mainly in animal models and pre-clinical research.

The pre-clinical research group is headed by dr Gerard Bos, associate professor internal medicine. The group includes senior staff members, postdocs, PhD students, students and technicians (N=15-20). The research takes place within the research institute of GROW, one of the research institutes of

MUMC+. Grow has a focus on cancer and development. Within the institute Gerard Bos is program leader for the theme of immunotherapy. Also members of the department of tumor biology (head Prof Tilanus) and nuclear medicine (Dr Brans) participate in this field of research.