The young and highly promising researchers of the Marie-Curie MELGEN European Training Network (ETN) are currently based at GenomeScan in Leiden, the Netherlands. They work with the latest Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies and receive hands-on experience in these innovative techniques.

In the last two weeks, we welcomed (international) experts such as Prof. T. Bishop (Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology), Prof. J. Newton-Bishop (Dermatology, U. of Leeds) and Prof. B. Bakker (Diagnostic genome analysis, LUMC). They provided many interesting lectures, together with clinical specialists of the LUMC, NGS experts and us. We hope that that this will lead to many new discoveries in Melanoma research!

The MELGEN network provides training to young professionals to expand their genomic, bio-informatics and immunologiMELGEN talents at our lab cal knowledge. They each perform their own research project at universities and commercial partners. During this course they share their findings and learn the newest techniques to boost their Melanoma research projects.

The aim of MELGEN is to understand the development of melanoma, genetically and immunologically. Ultimately, they want to improve precision medicine for melanoma patients. In recent years remarkable progress has already been made, which has led to the introduction of the first treatments to prolong life in patients with advanced disease: both targeted treatments and immune therapies.