Prof. Cornelis Melief Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands

Professor Cornelis (Kees) JM Melief is emeritus professor of internal medicine specialized in “immunohematology” at Leiden University. Since 2011 he is emeritus professor at LUMC and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of ISA Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company specializing in development of synthetic vaccines.
He received his Ph.D. degree in 1967... read morefrom the University of Amsterdam, where he also received his M.D. degree in 1970. He spent two years (1973/1974) as a postdoctoral fellow at the New England Medical Center and Dana Farber Cancer Center (Harvard) in Boston. In 1975 he became a staff member of the Netherlands Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service, heading a newly established department of cell-mediated immunology. In 1985 he became head of the Dept. of Tumor Immunology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. In 1991 he became head of the Dept.of immunohematology and blood transfusion at Leiden University Medical Center, also establishing and heading the tumor immunology group in the department. Of his many contributions to basic immunology, including work in mouse models, and clinical immunology, the most striking highlights are the eradication of large vascularized mouse tumors by adoptive transfer of cytotoxic T lymphocytes directed against an oncogene-encoded protein as well as the discovery that T cell help for cytotoxic T lymphocyte induction involves cognate interaction between CD40 ligand on T helper cells and CD40 on Dendritic Cells. This is a major novel pathway of cytotoxic T lymphocyte induction in non-inflammatory conditions. In recent years effective
immunotherapy of tumors with synthetic long peptides (SLP) was developed in mouse and rabbit models. This has led to the implementation of clinical trials in patients with cancer of viral and non-viral origin. Recently clinical effectiveness was shown in the treatment of patients with established lesions caused by high risk human papilloma virus type 16 (HPV 16).