Jean-Christophe (Chris) Marine is Professor at KU Leuven (Belgium), senior VIB group leader and Director of the VIB center for Cancer Biology.
He received numerous national and international awards for his work on cytokine signaling and cancer biology. He, for instance, received the outstanding research award from SMR in 2019 and was elected EMBO member in 2020. His interests focus on the mechanisms by which cancer-specific non-mutational (i.e. epigenetic and (post-) transcriptional) events shape tumour evolution. Using innovative genetic tools and leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as single-cell multiomics, spatial transcriptomics and proteomics, the Marine lab has made several key contributions to our understating of melanoma biology and, in particular, the mechanisms underlying melanoma initiation, growth, metastatic dissemination, emergence of inter-and intra-tumor heterogeneity, plasticity and resistance to both targeted and immune checkpoint therapy.
