"Back when we started testing, I actually expected very little of it. But as it turns out, if you mix four specific extremely low dose drugs, the resulting therapy works surprisingly well against lung cancer in mice. The tumor does not become resistant and the multiple low dose therapy is not harmful. It would be ideal if we could start testing this treatment in patients, but that is much harder to accomplish than one might think: it would mean that four production companies would have to share information about their drugs with one another, and they would prefer not to. It’s very frustrating! I came to the Netherlands entirely by chance. I was considering moving abroad and wrote to several European cancer institutes. I ended up at the NKI, where I could stay and complete my thesis. I met my Dutch wife here and we are planning to build a life for ourselves and our daughter in Portugal, my home country.”
João will defend his thesis on January 11.