LUMC Reproductive Immunology research group wins three prizes at international congress

The German Society for Immunology (DGfI) offered their Best Clinical Research Award to Liseanne van ‘t Hof, for her presentation on a novel, non-invasive method of fetal HLA assessment. The research project is aimed at enriching fetal trophoblasts from a PAP smear early during gestation, and characterizing these with the outlook of better predicting pregnancy outcome. Kim van Bentem, principally supervised by Marie-Louise van der Hoorn (Dept of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, LUMC), received the award for best Clinical Research from the Journal of Reproductive Immunology for her research on immunological characteristics of pregnancies after oocyte donation. She is investigating immune mediators, both in the placenta and in peripheral blood, as well as clinical risk factors to detect preeclampsia better and earlier in this special type of pregnancies. Michael Eikmans was initially nominated for the Best Mentor Award – Europe, and, after voting by the congress participants, awarded this prize from the ISIR.