Assoc. Prof. Alice Sijts
Head of Research Group | T-Cell Tolerance
Alice Sijts’ research aims to develop regulatory T cell-based therapies to dampen intestinal inflammations and allergies.
Network of Chlamydia trachomatis antigens presented on infected HeLa cells.
Quote from Assoc. Prof. Alice Sijts
Cells interact with their environment by displaying proteins on their surface, a tightly regulated process that can lead to different outcomes depending on the protein presented. Gaining insight into these diverse effects on the immune system may help us to improve immunotherapies.
Head of Research Group T-Cell Tolerance
Biography
Academic background and qualifications
Alice Sijts studied at the University of Leiden and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam, and received her PhD from Leiden University in 1994. During her PhD, she studied murine CD8 T cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity under the supervision of C. Melief, a pioneer in the field of tumour immunotherapy at the time. Following her PhD, she was trained in the filed of antigen processing by Eli Serzarz at the UCLA / USA, Eric Pamer at Yale University / USA and Peter Kloetzel at the Charite in Berlin / Germany.
Professional career
Since being an independent PI, she has i) explored different aspects of regulatory T cell-mediated immune regulation, as well as ii) antigen processing dynamics of different microbes in relation to the elicited immune responses. Most recently, her group generated a high-resolution profile of the MHC immunopeptidomes of bacterially infected cells and found that commonly detected antigens included virulence factors and evolutionary highly conserved proteins, present in several different bacterial pathogens as well commensals within the gastro-intestinal tract. This knowledge is exploited in her current projects.