About Prof. Dr. Sébastien Anguille
Prof. Anguille graduated summa cum laude as medical doctor (MD) in 2008 at the University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. After his graduation, Prof Anguille joined the research group of Prof Zwi Berneman at the same institution as a PhD student (supported by a 4-year FWO “aspirant” mandate and a 1-year “Emmanuel Van der Schueren” fellowship of the Flemish League against Cancer to finish his PhD). His PhD thesis, which revolved around cellular immunotherapy and more specifically around the development of an optimized dendritic cell vaccine for acute myeloid leukemia, resulted in several high-visibility publications in renowned journals, including Blood, Leukemia, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Lancet Oncology. In
2012-2013, Prof Anguille spent a 6-month research visit to the Dendritic Cell Biology & Therapeutics group of the ANZAC Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, headed by the late Prof Derek Hart. This research stay abroad was supported by a FWO travel grant (V444212N) and by an highly prestigious Endeavour Research Award granted by the Australian Government.
In 2013, Prof Anguille started his training as a medical specialist in Internal Medicine, which he completed in 2016. He qualified as Clinical Hematologist in 2017. Prof Anguille works as full-time staff member in the Division of Hematology of the Antwerp University Hospital since 2016. Since January 1st, he succeeded Prof Zwi Berneman as Head of the Division of Hematology of the Antwerp University Hospital and as Head of the Laboratory of Experimental Hematology (LEH) of the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences of the University of Antwerp.
In addition to his clinical activities, Prof Anguille’s main research focus continues to be on cellular immunotherapies for hematological diseases, including cell-based cancer vaccines and adoptive T-cell therapies (T-cell receptor [TCR]- and chimeric antigen receptor [CAR]-engineered T cells). His research activities involve both basic research (he is currently promotor or co-promotor of 8 PhD students at LEH) as well as translational/clinical research. Within this context, Prof Anguille serves as principal investigator (mainly in the field of cellular immunotherapy) of several clinical trials running at the Division of Hematology of the Antwerp University Hospital, including two large, multicentric academic cell therapy trials in hematological diseases for which he obtained funding from the Belgian National Cancer Plan Action 29 (1 500 000 €) and from Kom op Tegen Kanker (761 780 € ). Prof Anguille is co-chairing an FWO-TBM project (awarded in 2020 for a total amount of 1 305 429 €) together with Prof Stroobants from the Molecular Imaging Center Antwerp (MICA) of the University of Antwerp. Since 2021, he is also promotor of an FWO Research Project entitled “BCMA immunoPET to predict and monitor treatment response to CAR-based cellular therapies in multiple myeloma” (462 504€). His research was awarded with several national and international prizes and grants (including a VOCATIO award in 2012, a FWO research grant in 2018, a prize from the Horlait-Dapsens Foundation in 2018, a research grant from Janssen Pharmaceutics in 2019, and the Gilead Belux Fellowship 2020). In 2019, Dr Anguille was one of the laureates of the FWO “Fundamentele Klinische Mandaten”, enabling him to combine his clinical activities with basis research on TCR- and CAR-engineered T cells for hematological malignancies. To date, Prof Anguille’s research resulted in 158 publications with >4000 citations and a Google scholar H-index of 33.
Areas of interest
Acute myeloid leukemia
Multiple myeloma
Immunotherapy: bispecific antibodies,
TCR-T and CAR-T