Sciensano

Sciensano, the Scientific Institute of Public Health in Belgium, can count on more than 900 staff members who are committed to human and animal health every day. As the name suggests, science and health are central to the Institute’s mission. Sciensano’s strength and uniqueness lie within the holistic and multidisciplinary approach to health. More particularly, the Institute’s focuses on the close and indissoluble interconnection between human and animal health and their environment (the “One health” concept).

The Cancer centre of Sciensano was created in 2008 in the framework of the national cancer plan set up by the Belgian Federal government. The Center pursue three principal objectives : to provide monitoring and evaluation of the policy relating to cancer in Belgium, to draw up new measures for cancer control and, finally, to act as a consultative scientific body in the field of cancer control.

Sciensano works in close collaboration with all existing institutions and organisations in the field of cancer, both in Belgium and abroad. The Institute ensures a good transfer of information and knowledge to these participants, in order to avoid double work and to guarantee an effective use of the available resources.

Sciensano also plays the role of scientific advisory body. The Institute keeps track of what is ongoing in the field of cancer control and report on a regular basis. Sciensano carries out evaluations on the basis of scientific and pragmatic indicators, which enables to show the effects of specific measures in the field.

Sciensano identify gaps or needs and to formulate SMART proposals for future measures. The Institute supports or manages pilot projects to address the best conditions to implement such proposals.

Role of institution in the project

The Cancer centre of Sciensano will actively participate in WP7/Task 7.1. The task aims to demonstrate the usability of the EUCAIM platform for new data incorporation. For this, a subset of data from 2 observational clinical trials on comprehensive gene-profiling within the national HCS of Belgium will be used. Digital images of pathology slides will be prepared and centrally stored, together with a SQL clinical database. The use of high-performance integrated data-analysis tools will be corroborated by testing the platform with additional cases of the 2 observational clinical trials.

Marc Van den Bulcke

Marc Van den Bulcke obtained a PhD in sciences at the Laboratory of Genetics, University of Ghent (Belgium). He worked for about 7 years within the biotech industry at Plant Genetic Systems where he was involved in regulatory affairs and biotech product quality assurance. Since 2003, he works at Sciensano, where he supported the establishment of the National Reference Laboratory on GMO detection. From 2009-2012, he worked as a contract agent at the ‘Institute of Health and Consumer Protection’ at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission where he coordinated policy-support research in molecular detection. Since 2013, he heads the Cancer Centre. A particular initiative is the introduction of ‘omics’ as tool in personalized medicine in oncology based on advances in translational research and public health. Other key activities of the Cancer Centre focus on models to support the socio-professional reintegration of cancer patients, on screening and early detection, on psycho-social and palliative care and on integrating opinions of patients, citizens and general practitioners in the policy support activities of the Cancer Centre. Also, various collaboration at EC level through several Joint Actions and several projects now within the EBCP has been a key interest of the Cancer Centre.

Emilie Cauët

Emilie Cauët studied at the Department of Chemistry, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) (Belgium) and obtained the degree of Doctor of Sciences in 2006. Her doctoral research focused on quantum chemistry applied to biophysical problems, i.e. radiation damage in DNA. Following her doctoral degree she worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Chemistry Department at the University of California, San Diego (USA) and in the School of Public Health and the Cancer Department of Imperial College London (UK). In 2016, she became a lecturer at the Chemistry Department of ULB. In 2021, she joined Sciensano as a Scientific Collaborator in Public Health Genomics unit at the Cancer Center.

Aline Antoniou

Aline Antoniou has a Master’s Degree in Molecular Biology in 2004 (Université Libre of Brussels), and after pursuing her Master’s Degree, she went on to be a teaching assistant at de Duve Institute (Université Catholique de Louvain), while she performed research on differentiation of liver cells. She obtained a PhD in Biomedical Sciences in 2011, then worked as a post-doc researcher in Oncology using Next Generation Sequencing (Université Libre of Brussels). She spent two years supervising and developing NGS and other Molecular Biology assays dedicated to cancer diagnosis and therapy at the service of Anatomic pathology of the Bordet Institute in Brussels. In 2016, she joined Sciensano to work as a scientific collaborator at the Department Quality of laboratories on evaluation of Next Generation Sequencing practices in Belgian laboratories.

Nina Van Goethem

Nina Van Goethem obtained her master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences in 2015 and her master’s degree in Epidemiology in 2017 from the University of Antwerp. Right after, she started a PhD in Public Health at Sciensano, in collaboration with UCLouvain. As part of the BeReady project, her focus was on providing an epidemiologist’s perspective on the integration of pathogen genomic data within the current surveillance landscape. She successfully defended her PhD in January 2022 and is now working as an epidemiologist in the Public Health and Genome unit at Sciensano.

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Learn how to access and utilize our federated cancer image repository. The webinar is for AI Innovators & Data Providers interested in the platform and will feature an introduction to EUCAIM & Cancer Image Europe and a demonstration of data exploration & access.

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