Radiotherapy has been used for already more than a century to treat cancer patients. The primary mechanism by which radiotherapy kills tumor cells is by inducing lethal DNA damage. Apart from this, radiotherapy contributes to treatment outcome by affecting the tumor micro-environment, including the tumor vasculature and the anti-tumor immune response. 

The research of the AURORA lab aims to optimize the clinical benefit of radiotherapy and to improve the therapeutic outcome for cancer patients. For this, preclinical research is performed to unravel how radiotherapy modulates both tumor cells and the tumor micro-environment and how we can target tumor cells and the tumor micro-environment to make radiotherapy more effective. In addition, clinical research is performed in close collaboration with radiation oncologists of the clinical department of radiation oncology of the Amsterdam UMC.

The different research topics can be found on the specific team leader pages. Don't worry, we like to keep science simple because it should be available and understandable to everybody. If you still want to know more about our research, please check our publications to get an overview of all the published work of our group.