In September, Ghent University hosted Dr. Victoria Turubanova and Mariia Saviuk from Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod within the short-term visiting fellowship programme for individual researchers from the Eureast Platform of Ghent University. They worked together with Prof. Dmitri Krysko at the Cell Death Investigation and Therapy (CDIT) laboratory at the Department of Human Structure and Repair at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

This is a continuation of the long-standing collaboration between Prof. Krysko and the team led by Prof. Vedunova who is principal investigator at Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod.

The first time Dr. Turubanova came to Prof. Krysko laboratory in 2019 as a master student.  During her stay, she received extensive training in the field of immunogenic cancer cell death. Dr. Turubanova's following visits and close scientific cooperation led to the publication of 14 articles together in prestigious international peer-reviewed journals, which have been widely cited by the scientific community.

Dr. Turubanova: “This year during our stay at CDIT laboratory we have finalized the work which we initiated in March 2019, and it has been recently appeared in one of the top journals “Cell Death and Disease” published by Springer-Nature group (doi: 10.1038/s41419-022-05514-0). In this article, we present an effective experimental therapy for glioblastoma, which is one of the most aggressive types of cancer of the central nervous system. Despite the current combined treatment, cancer almost always recurs and the typical duration of survival following diagnosis is 10 to 13 months. In our work, we developed novel vaccines based on dendritic cells and photodynamic therapy and identified the molecular mechanisms of their action. These vaccines showed their efficacy in several mouse models of glioblastoma.”

Ms. Saviuk continues:  “to generate these vaccines we developed a photodynamic therapy that allows us  to induce a specific immunogenic form of cell death in cancer cells. This cell death type is a prerequisite for successful therapy because it activates the patient’s immune system to fight against cancer, allowing the formation of lifelong anti-tumor immunity”. Ms. Saviuk worked  twice in the CDIT laboratory during her bachelor’s and master’s studies, which enabled her just recently to start a Ph.D. in the CDIT laboratory led by Prof. Krysko where she will develop novel cancer immunotherapy based on photodynamic treatment.

In conclusion, Prof. Krysko underlies that “in this work, we have developed a prognostic mathematical model for accurately predicting survival of patients with glioblastoma. These data open attractive perspectives for improving glioma therapy by employing dendritic cell vaccines and by using this prognostic model to better predict the survival of glioma patients.” Next, Prof. Krysko emphasizes that “collaboration is the essence of science. This work, of course, is a result of tight cooperation  between many scientists from 12 labs spread over three universities (UGent, KU Leuven and UNN) and two countries.”