Eva Lion

As the first Alliance manager Cell & Gene Therapy research (2025) for the University of Antwerp, POM Antwerpen and the University hospital Antwerp, I am eager to consolidate the cell, tissue and gene therapy research and enabling technologies in Antwerp, within Flanders, Belgium and beyond. The objectives are to map the ecosystem, leverage research & innovation, and develop new ATMP-fuelled business for knowledge institute University of Antwerp, the incubator Science Park and University Hospital Antwerp.

As professor Medical Cell Biology and principal investigator at the Laboratory of Experimental Hematology (University of Antwerp) and Expert Cell Therapy clinical research at the Center for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine (Antwerp University Hospital), I find myself in the center of translational research on emerging immune cell engineering strategies for development of immunotherapies. With my team, I am able to perform basic, translational and clinical research in the field of personalised cell vaccination and adoptive cell transfer for the treatment of cancer. My intertwined 2025 spearpoints within the translational immunology and cellular immunotherapy program are the (i) identification and functional validation of antigen-specific T-cell receptors (TCRs) in the context of biomarker and therapeutics research with my wet lab angel team and powered by my colleague computational dry lab magicians; (ii) advanced immune monitoring of the investigator-driven dendritic cell cancer vaccination trials; (iii) valorisation of these huge team efforts.