Cleo Goyvaerts

Cleo Goyvaerts is a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in the department of Molecular Imaging and Therapy, affiliated with the Basic Biomedical Sciences faculty. She previously held a postdoctoral position at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (2016–2017). Her research focuses on antitumor immunotherapy (lung cancer/melanoma), lentiviral vector applications, and 3D tumor immunology models to study immunotherapy resistance. She has supervised multiple theses on topics like tumor microenvironment analysis and lentiviral vector optimization.

Research Highlights: Her work includes developing nanobody-displayed lentiviral vectors for targeting antigen-presenting cells and investigating tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells' role in cancer progression. She pioneered 3D tumor models to study immune interactions and led projects such as the 3D CRiMe scene to uncover cytotoxicity resistance mechanisms in lung cancer.

Awards: Notable accolades include the ILC Foundation Young Investigator Award (2020) and a BAEF fellowship (2016). She has organized events like the Wetenschapsfestival and presented at conferences worldwide, emphasizing experimental animal roles in cancer research and immunotherapy advancements.

Grants & Labs: Active in projects funded by FWO, BRGRD, and ANI, focusing on precision medicine imaging, tumor resistance mechanisms, and theranostics. Her lab collaborates globally, with publications in Gene Therapy, Frontiers in Immunology, and Nature Biomedical Engineering.