“It is a great honor to receive this award: a wonderful recognition of our research into the role of the immune system in breast cancer. My heartfelt thanks go to my fantastic team and colleagues,” says De Visser, professor at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and group leader at both Oncode Institute and the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
Karin de Visser’s research lies at the intersection of tumor immunology and tumor biology, focusing on two key questions: how does breast cancer circumvent the immune system, and how can we leverage the immune system to its fullest in our fight against cancer? “Through our scientific research, we hope to contribute to the development of new types of immunotherapy for breast cancer, so more patients can benefit from them.”
De Visser and her team have made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of the way breast cancer circumvents and even manipulates the immune system. They discovered that the immune cells in the lymph nodes, liver, and lungs already begin to change in the early stages of breast cancer, even before the cancer cells have spread to these regions. This indicates that the breast tumor can remotely influence other organs. Her team showed that these changed immune cells undermine the immune response, thus promoting metastasis. Her research has also provided critical insights into the way genetic changes in tumors impact immune responses.
These findings lay a scientific foundation for immunotherapies tailored specifically to a tumor's genetic profile. Together with Marleen Kok, oncologist and group leader at the NKI, De Visser also discovered that eosinophils, a type of inflammatory cell often overlooked in cancer research, play a crucial role in the effectiveness of immunotherapy for breast cancer patients.
De Visser’s work is very important because it reveals that the interaction between tumor cells and the immune system is far more complex than previously thought. Her findings offer new pointers for personalized treatments that could enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapy in the future.
Her work was previously recognized with several awards, including the Metastasis Research Prize, presented by the Beug Foundation in 2015. She also received an ERC Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council in 2014 and a VICI grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) in 2019.
The Pezcoller-Marina Larcher Fogazzaro-EACR Women in Cancer Research Award will be presented to De Visser at the annual EACR Congress, taking place between June 16 and 19, 2025, in Lisbon. She will also receive a cash prize of €10,000. She will deliver the Pezcoller-Marina Larcher Fogazzaro-EACR Women in Cancer Research Award Lecture during the conference.