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Maartje C.A. Wouters

Maartje C.A. Wouters
Self-employed · wouterswriting.com

PhD
Freelance medical and science writer and editor for hire.

About

36
Publications
3,887
Reads
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1,433
Citations
Introduction
Medical and science writer with eight years of research experience in cancer immunotherapy. Highly skilled in writing grant applications, manuscripts, protocols, reviews, and reports. Currently specializing in regulatory clinical trial documentation. My previous research focused on profiling and assessing the function of the immune infiltrate in the tumor microenvironment, and studying interactions at the interface between tumor epithelial and stromal tissue.
Additional affiliations
January 2020 - present
Wouters Writing
Position
  • Freelance medical and science writer
Description
  • Freelance medical and science writer and editor for hire. -Medical writing for biotech, including protocol development, clinical trial documentation, white papers, (technical) blogs, and study results reports -Academic manuscript writing and editing services -Science reporting -Fact-checking -Literature reviews
March 2016 - January 2020
BC Cancer
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Description
  • Toward Personalized Immunotherapy: Defining Mechanisms Of Immune Suppression Across The Molecular Subtypes Of Ovarian Cancer
November 2011 - March 2016
University of Groningen
Position
  • PhD Student
Description
  • The immune environment in ovarian cancer
Education
November 2011 - March 2016
University of Groningen
Field of study
  • Tumor immunology
September 2009 - September 2011
Radboud University
Field of study
  • Biomedical Sciences; Human Pathobiology and Human Toxicology
September 2005 - September 2009
Radboud University
Field of study
  • Biomedical Sciences

Publications

Publications (36)
Article
Full-text available
PURPOSE: Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) are associated with a better prognosis in high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC). However, it is largely unknown how this prognostic benefit of TIL relates to current standard treatment of surgical resection and (neo-)adjuvant chemotherapy. To address this outstanding issue, we compared TIL infiltratio...
Article
Introduction Intraepithelial CD8+ tumour-infiltrating T-lymphocytes (TIL) are associated with a prolonged survival in endometrial cancer (EC). By contrast, stromal infiltration of CD8+ TIL does not confer prognostic benefit. A single marker to discriminate these populations would therefore be of interest for rapid assessment of the tumour immune co...
Article
Full-text available
CD103+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) have been linked to specific epithelial infiltration and a prolonged survival in high-grade serous epithelial ovarian cancer (HGSC). However, whether these cells are induced as part of an ongoing anti-HGSC immune response or represent non-specifically expanded resident or mucosal lymphocytes remains large...
Article
Full-text available
There is abundant evidence that tumor-infiltrating CD8+ T cells contribute positively to anti-tumor immunity; however, the role of tumor-infiltrating B cells (TIL-B) and plasma cells (PC) remains controversial, leading to differing opinions about whether immunotherapies should be designed to enhance or inhibit these cells. Through a comprehensive P...
Article
Purpose: Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) are strongly associated with survival in most cancers; however, the tumor-reactive subset that drives this prognostic effect remains poorly defined. CD39, CD103, and PD-1 have been independently proposed as markers of tumor-reactive CD8+ TIL in various cancers. We evaluated the phenotype, clonality and...
Preprint
Rapamycin, also known as sirolimus, has demonstrated great potential for application in longevity medicine. However, the bioavailability of generic and compounded rapamycin at longevity doses in normative aging individuals remains unknown. We conducted a retrospective, real-world study determining the 24-hour blood rapamycin levels to establish the...
Article
Objective Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell strategies ideally target a surface antigen that is exclusively and uniformly expressed by tumors; however, no such antigen is known for high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSC). A potential solution involves combinatorial antigen targeting with AND or OR logic-gating. Therefore, we investigated co...
Conference Paper
A majority of patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) develop progressive disease following primary treatment, with a five-year survival rate of approximately 40%, and less than 10% survive more than 10 years. Profound genomic instability, treatment with DNA-damaging drugs, and a large tumor burden promote the development of acquired...
Article
Full-text available
Objective We recently showed that tumors with an immunologically ‘cold’ phenotype are enriched for expression of stemness-associated genes and PVR/CD155, the ligand of the immunosuppressive molecule TIGIT. To explore the therapeutic implications of this finding, we investigated the relationship between PVR/CD155 expression, tumor-infiltrating lymph...
Article
Full-text available
Epithelial Ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal gynecological malignancy and has limited curative therapeutic options. Immunotherapy for EOC is promising, but clinical efficacy remains restricted to a small percentage of patients. Several lines of evidence suggest that the low response rate might be improved by combining immunotherapy with carbo...
Conference Paper
urpose: The majority of patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) develop progressive disease following primary treatment, with a five-year survival rate of ~30%. However, a subset of patients have an extraordinary response to treatment and ~15% survive more than ten years (long-term survivors). The Multidisciplinary Ovarian Cancer Outc...
Conference Paper
urpose: The majority of patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) develop progressive disease following primary treatment, with a five-year survival rate of ~30%. However, a subset of patients have an extraordinary response to treatment and ~15% survive more than ten years (long-term survivors). The Multidisciplinary Ovarian Cancer Outc...
Article
Full-text available
The chemokine CXCL13 mediates recruitment of B cells to tumors and is essential for the formation of tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs). TLSs are thought to support antitumor immunity and are associated with improved prognosis. However, it remains unknown whether TLSs are formed in response to the general inflammatory character of the tumor microe...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Introduction The majority of clinical responses to immunotherapies appear to be restricted to tumours displaying a pre-existing T cell-infiltrated tumour microenvironment. Consequently, understanding the molecular mechanisms leading to a T cell-poor microenvironment will be crucial for the development of novel treatments to increase the number of p...
Article
Purpose: Women with epithelial ovarian cancer generally have a poor prognosis, however a subset of patients has an unexpected dramatic and durable response to treatment. We sought to identify clinical, pathological, and molecular determinants of exceptional survival in women with high-grade serous cancer (HGSC), a disease associated with the major...
Article
Introduction: CD103+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) have been linked to specific epithelial infiltration and a prolonged survival in epithelial malignancies. However, whether these cells are induced as part of an ongoing anti-tumor immune response or represent non-specifically expanded resident or mucosal lymphocytes remains largely unknown....
Article
Full-text available
Outcome of cytoreductive surgery, treatment sequence and the differentiation status of T cells are key factors to take into account when studying the prognostic value of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in high grade serous ovarian cancer.
Article
Full-text available
Background The immune system is important in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Interleukin-6 is associated with chemoresistance and an immune-suppressive tumor microenvironment. We investigated whether a combination of chemotherapeutics, blockade of interleukin 6 (IL-6) receptor (IL-6R; tocilizumab), and immune enhancer interferon-α (Peg-Intron) is...
Article
Full-text available
Recent studies have highlighted a small subset of T cells that express the B cell marker CD20. In healthy volunteers this subset was INF-y producing, but in rheumatoid arthritis patients this subset was characterized by IL-17 production. However, the origin and relevance of this population of T cells remains unclear. Here, we identified that CD20 i...
Article
The therapeutic effect of anti-cancer monoclonal antibodies stems from their capacity to opsonize targeted cancer cells with subsequent phagocytic removal, induction of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) or induction of complement-mediated cytotoxicity (CDC). The major immune effector cells involved in these processes are natural...
Article
Full-text available
An increased level of interleukin-6 (IL-6) in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is correlated with a worse prognosis. IL-6 stimulates tumor-growth and inflammation. We investigated the intricate interaction between the IL-6 signaling pathway and tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells (TIMs) to determine their prognostic impact in EOC. 160 EOC samples were...
Article
Full-text available
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a group of small noncoding RNAs involved in the regulation of gene expression. As such, they regulate a large number of cellular pathways, and deregulation or altered expression of miRNAs is associated with tumorigenesis. In the current study, we evaluated the feasibility and clinical utility of circulating miRNAs as biomarke...
Data
Full-text available
To evaluate assay reproducibility, we tested four samples in duplicate. The scatterplots demonstrate the result for these samples. The blue line represents the regression line and the correlation coefficients, and corresponding P values are given on top of the scatterplot.
Data
Full-text available
Boxplots showing the comparison of the miRNA-expression profiles of four selected miRNAs (miR-135b, miR-106a, miR-100, and miR-145) between tumor samples grouped by their SSP-defined molecular subtype. The top row represents two miRNAs overexpressed in the Basal-like samples; the bottom row represents two miRNAs overexpressed in Normal-like samples...
Data
Full-text available
To perform a technical validation of our miRNA-expression data, we analyzed 12 samples by using the nCounter Analysis System and compared these results with the qRT-PCR-based miRNA expression profiles. The scatterplots illustrate the result of this comparison. The correlation coefficients for each comparison are reported on top of the scatterplots.
Data
Full-text available
Boxplot illustrating the sRNA yields extracted from five different peripheral blood media. The X-axis depicts the different analyzed media (from left to right: serum, plasma, platelet-rich plasma, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), and whole blood); the Y-axis depicts the sRNA concentration. The sRNA yields are most pronounced in whole blo...
Article
10506 Background: miRNAs are small non-coding RNAs involved in the regulation of gene expression. Dysregulation of miRNAs is associated with tumorigenesis. In this study we have evaluated the clinical utility of circulating miRNAs as biomarkers for the detection and staging of breast cancer. Methods: miRNAs were extracted from a set of 84 surgical...

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