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Jan Willem Gratama

Jan Willem Gratama

Councilor

Dr. Jan Willem Gratama (Jan) is chairman of the Laboratory for Clinical and Tumor Immunology within the Department of Internal Oncology at Erasmus MC (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). With more than 30 coworkers, the laboratory’s main clinical activities are:

(I) immunological detection of circulating tumor cells (CTC) and circulating endothelial cells (CEC); 
(II) immunological diagnosis of leukaemia and lymphoma; 
(III) detection and monitoring of minimal residual disease in patients with haematological malignancies;
(IV) immunotherapy and immuno-gene therapy of solid tumors;
(V) monitoring of the effects of immune interventions in patients with cancer.


On the research side, led by dr. Reno Debets, we focus on: 

(I) antigen-specific receptor gene transfer to retarget T cells to solid tumors and viral antigens;
(II) adenoviral targeting to solid tumors;
(III) novel ligand-receptor systems with antitumor activities;
(IV) novel immune technologies. As such, our laboratory has extensive collaborations within the framework of EU-sponsored consortia and EORTC clinical studies. At the national level, our group serves as reference laboratory for clinical applications of flow cytometry, and coordinates in that position the external quality assurance surveys on clinically used flow cytometric assays (see www.skml.nl).


In 1996, Bruno Brando, Jan Gratama, Gregor Rothe, Stefano Papa and Gerd Schmitz founded of the European Working Group on Clinical Cell Analysis (EWGCCA) together with 12 European professionals active in clinical cytometry. Ever since, Jan has been treasurer of this group, which was transformed into the European Society for Clinical Cell Analysis in 2006.