Rebeca De Wolf

Rebeca De Wolf is an External employee at the Translational Oncology Research Center within the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. She currently holds a PhD fellowship and conducts fundamental research in oncology and immunotherapy, focusing on CAR-T cell applications for liver diseases and cancer.

Her academic background includes a Master's thesis titled "Macrophage dynamics in adult murine beta cell proliferation" (2024), supervised by Prof. De Leu (promotor), Prof. Staels (co-promotor), and Prof. Willems (advisor).

De Wolf's research integrates stem cell biology with immunotherapy, specifically developing CAR-T cell treatments for hepatocellular carcinoma and chronic liver disease. Her work leverages iPSC-derived liver organoids to model disease progression and therapeutic responses, with emphasis on retinoic acid pathways for improving cellular differentiation models.

Her 2025 publication demonstrates how 9-cis-retinoic acid enhances disease modeling capabilities in liver organoids, reflecting her focus on translational approaches to bridge laboratory findings with clinical applications in hepatology and oncology.

She received the competitive FWO-PhD Fellowship for fundamental research on October 4, 2024, supporting her doctoral work in translational oncology.

De Wolf actively contributes to the CATCH project (FWOTM1257), a five-year FWO-funded initiative (2024-2028) investigating CAR-T cell immunotherapy against chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma, collaborating with senior researchers van Grunsven and Breckpot at VUB's Translational Oncology Research Center.