Lien Lybaert

Lien studied pharmaceutical sciences where she focused on targeted cancer therapy in her master thesis. After her studies, she did an IWT-funded PhD in the lab of Biopharmaceutical Technology of Prof. Bruno De Geest at Ghent University where she focused on the design of immune-modulating generic polymeric strategies for personalised cell-based cancer vaccination. During her PhD she went abroad as FWO-funded visiting researcher in the lab of Prof. Aaron Esser-Kahn at the University of California, Irvine where she researched TLR-ligand adjuvant functionalisation of cancer vaccines. She published five first-author A1 publications and is co-author on multiple different scientific papers. 

Since 2019 Lien is working as clinical and scientific alliance manager at myNEO, a start-up located in Ghent focusing on genomic and immune analysis for personalised therapies. Her expertise in the immune-oncology field as well as her in-depth knowledge of tumour immuno-biology and therapeutic strategies, make Lien the link between the bioinformatics team, the collaborating laboratories, hospitals, and universities as well as the partners of myNEO. She also coordinates the personalised tumour analysis platform wherein she is the primary contact with the patients and aligns with the treating oncologist(s) as well as other relevant parties. Since 2021 Lien has also become coordinator of Persomed (a joint venture with LMCT-VUB, QbD, Antleron and VUB) wherein she manages the preparation for the clinical phase I in metastatic colorectal cancer patients. 

Lien currently combines her job at myNEO (0.6FTE) with a management position (0.4FTE) at the LMCT lab led by Prof. dr. Karine Breckpot. As research coordinator she is responsible for people and project management as well as high-level coordination of the main cancer immunotherapy research projects . One of the primary focus points is to push Persomed towards a clinical phase I together with myNEO, Antleron & QbD and to grow it further into a well-established company.