David Gancberg

David Gancberg studied during his PhD thesis the spontaneous immune response induced in mastocytoma P815-inoculated mice and the possibility to use recombinant parvoviruses for cancer treatment. A shift in the immune response from Th1-type to Th2- type could be identified along the tumour growth in vivo by analysis of targeted indicators of the cellular and the humoral responses, and the construction of oncotropic recombinant parvoviruses, engineered to express the co-stimulatory signal CD80 or CD83 (needed for priming of T cells), led to an increased allogenic response in vitro in virus infected tumour cells. He joined the Jules Bordet Institute (Brussels, Belgium) in 1997 to develop new diagnostic and prognostic markers of tumours in the department of Pathology, in particular for the breast cancer. He joined the Chemotherapy/Translational research department of the same Institute in 1999 in order to evaluate relevant biological markers in breast cancer international clinical studies. In 2001, he joined the Joint Research Centre (Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements) of the European Commission in Geel (Belgium) as postdoctoral fellow to contribute to the production and characterisation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and Health-related reference materials. In 2003 he was hired as auxiliary at IRMM and in 2005 became a scientific Officer. He is in charge of the development of DNA-based reference material used for the genetic testing and is involved in the CRMGEN and EuroGentest projects. He is also responsible for the production and the certification of GMO-based reference materials.