Marianne Boes
University Medical Center Utrecht
Netherlands
Marianne Boes obtained a Master in Medical Biology from the VU-Amsterdam in 1996. From 1996-2008, she lived in Boston, USA. She performed PhD research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), at the Center for Cancer Research under supervision of prof. Jianzhu Chen. Here she studied immunodeficiency mechanisms in mice. Postdoctoral work she performed at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of prof. Hidde Ploegh, on mechanisms that control adaptive immune activation. In 2004, Dr. Boes started her independent research lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, financed in part by an NWO-Veni grant in 2004 and a large NIH-RO1 grant that was awarded to her in 2007. In 2008, her lab moved to the UMC-Utrecht, Pediatrics department.
Her research interest continues to be centered on immunodeficiencies and immune activation. The Boes laboratory is embedded within the laboratory of translational immunology (LTI) infrastructure, fostering collaborative immunology research. Additional collaborative projects on immune activation she co-directs with investigators at the Metabolic Disease Department, the Veterinary Department of the UU, and the Hubrecht Institute. A recent development is to apply basic immune activation research to develop immunotherapy against cancer, research she conducts with colleagues at the Princess Máxima Centre for Pediatric Oncology.