John B.A.G. Haanen is professor by special appointment at the department of clinical oncology of the Leiden University Medical Center. In addition, John Haanen is Head of the Division of Medical Oncology at The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

More information about J.B.A.G. Haanen

John B.A.G. Haanen is professor by special appointment at the department of clinical oncology of the Leiden University Medical Center. In addition, John Haanen is Head of the Division of Medical Oncology at The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Clinical Oncology

In the past decade, immunotherapy has led to a paradigm shift in the treatment of cancer. In metastatic melanoma, 3 year overall survival rate increased from 10-15% for chemotherapy to close to 60% for combination immunotherapy, consisting of inhibitors of immune checkpoints on T-lymphocytes. Next to this breakthrough in the outcome of patients with metastatic melanoma, also patients suffering from other types of cancer clearly derive benefit from immunotherapy. My chair, translational immunotherapy of cancer, allows me to perform study the mechanisms of action of different types of immunotherapy, the resistance mechanisms and to look for biomarkers of respons to immunotherapy enabling better selection of patients for this treatment.

John Haanen is involved in the clinical development and trials with adoptive cell therapy using in vitro activated tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, both at the LUMC and at NKI.

Academic career

John Haanen studied chemistry at the Leiden University, but switched to Medicine after obtaining his Bachelor in 1981. After his MD, cum laude, in 1988, he did his PhD training at the department of immunohaematology & Blood Bank of the LUMC, with Prof. Dr. René R.P. de Vries. On November 13, John Haanen defended his thesis: Functional analysis of Human Mycobacterium leprae-specific CD4+ helper T cell clones, successfully.

He specialized in internal medicine, and started a post-doctoral fellowship at the Division of tumor immunology at NKI (with Prof. Dr. Ada Kruisbeek), immediately followed by further specialization in medical oncology. In October 2008 he became professor by special appointment and gave his inaugural speech on October 2, 2009, entitled: On research with immune cells and multilingual doctors.

Publications