Pieter Van Vlierberghe receives Swiss Bridge Award 2016 for cancer research
Professor Pieter Van Vlierberghe has received the prestigious 'Swiss Bridge Award 2016'. The researcher from the University of Ghent was one of four prize winners selected out of more than 200 candidates by the scientific jury. In addition to the prize itself, the winners also received 250,000 Swiss francs.
In his research, Pieter Van Vlierberghe attempts to find new medicines which could fully or partially replace the exhausting and toxic chemotherapy which is currently used for treating leukaemia in children. People who have had chemotherapy in childhood often encounter problems in later life as a result of the dangerous side effects of this treatment, including infertility, reduced intellectual capacity and an increased chance of developing a secondary tumour. This is because the current treatment destroys all cells in the body that divide quickly, meaning that countless healthy cells are also destroyed.
Thanks to the Swiss Bridge Award, Pieter Van Vlierberghe can now carry out research into the effects of one new medicine in particular which will destroy cancer cells in a more targeted manner, and verify why this medicine works in some children but not others.