Biography

Marianne Boes heads the pediatric immunology laboratory at the UMC Utrecht, embedded in the Center for Translational Immunology. She focuses all translational research efforts on immune cell communication. The inadequate use of immune pathways can result in disease, such as exemplified in primary immunodeficiency patients, and while immune response modification has already created much positive impact on patient care, there is still much work to be done. First, for chronic inflammatory diseases, treatment in many cases is still based on generalized immune suppression (i.e., DMARDs, disease modifying antirheumatic drugs), that may also potentially suppress immune reactivity that ward off infections and malignancy. Second, early experiences of cancer immunotherapy now reveal the occurrence of auto-immunological adverse events, in severe cases leading to diseases including (but not limited to) diabetes and rheumatoid disease. Third, immune response modification holds the promise to prevent the clinical presentation of certain autoimmune and/or immunometabolic disorders for which key biomarkers or drivers are already known (i.e., psoriatic arthritis, type I diabetes, early atherosclerosis). This latter research field has been especially under-investigated, and has the focus of her lab. The strength of the immune response and its promise to redirection using immune response modification as preventive medicine is tremendous. Boes works with the premise that its full applicability requires better understanding of immune cell communication, which she pursues by study of well-defined human patient cohorts, for the stratification of patients within such cohorts and to arrive at earlier and more precise disease intervention.

Boes trained in the USA in immunology and cell biology research (1996-2008). She performed PhD research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), at the Koch Institute for integrative Cancer Research under supervision of prof. Jianzhu Chen. Here she studied immunodeficiency mechanisms using mouse models. Postdoctoral work she performed at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of prof. Hidde Ploegh, where she discovered the rapid and dynamic endosomal remodeling process in dendritic cells that occurs immediately upon antigen-specific T-cell contact (Boes et al, Nature 2002). 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 2008, she moved her lab to the UMC-Utrecht. She published more than 130 articles (H-index 40) in international journals, including Nature, Science, Immunity, J. Exp. Med., Nature Immunology and J. Clin. Invest. She and her group received numerous prestigious national and international grants and awards. Boes serves as senior editor for several peer-reviewed journals and is a regular reviewer for major journals in her field. She is the founding chair of the Young Academy of the UMC Utrecht (chair Sept 2019-Jan 2022) and board member of the Center for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo; working group of the Young Academies of the Strategic Alliance between TU-Eindhoven, Wageningen, Utrecht University and UMC-Utrecht, 2019-2022). Boes serves as coordinator of the course 'Advanced Immunology' for PhD students, and the MSc course Logical Argumentation in Science: Publishing, Proposals and Pitching (co-coordinating with Eric Kalkhoven). She is current member of the I&I graduate school teaching committee. She thoroughly enjoys to meet and learn from researchers, patients and societal partners in different fields. 

Research in Boes lab is supported financially by grants from NWO, the European Research Council (ERC), the Lymph&co foundation, the strategic alliance TUe, WUR, UU, UMCU (The Power-Of-One project) and several industry partners. Boes collaborates across disciplines with investigators, societal partners and patientgroups at the UMC-Utrecht and beyond. Several collaborative projects exist with labs elsewhere in Europe and in the USA.