The aim of this thesis was to investigate if a text-mining tool is suitable for collecting real-world data from electronic health records to evaluate cancer treatments in clinical practice. By... Show moreThe aim of this thesis was to investigate if a text-mining tool is suitable for collecting real-world data from electronic health records to evaluate cancer treatments in clinical practice. By investigating a range of use cases including treatments of patients with renal cell carcinoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, melanoma, breast cancer, and COVID-19, it showed that the text-mining tool is a suitable method of data needed for the evaluation of treatment patterns, effectiveness, safety, prognostic factors, and guideline adherence. The discussion showed that enhancing the data quality and actively using real-world data for treatment evaluation regarding treatment policies are some of the next steps. Show less
Melanoma is a malignancy that arises from melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells that can be predominantly found in the eye or the epidermal basal layer of the skin. Mainly due to increased UV... Show moreMelanoma is a malignancy that arises from melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells that can be predominantly found in the eye or the epidermal basal layer of the skin. Mainly due to increased UV exposure, the incidence of melanoma has doubled worldwide over the past three decades (200.000 new cases in 2008). Primary melanomas can be easily treated by surgical resection, leading to a good prognosis for stage I patients. However, metastasized melanoma is almost completely resistant to therapeutic modalities such as radio- and chemotherapy, resulting in a median overall survival of less than one year for this patient group. Despite considerable efforts, for over 20 years there was no melanoma treatment developed that could improve survival of stage IV patients. However, the treatment of unresectable metastasized melanoma has progressed markedly in recent years due to the development of both immunotherapies that stimulate anti-tumor immunity and targeted therapies that block oncogenic proteins. This thesis will focus on pre-clinical work concerning the optimization of melanoma treatment. In detail, it will address for both targeted therapies and immunotherapies factors that play a role in the identification of response-predictive biomarkers, the toxicity of treatments, and the potential efficacy of combination treatments. Show less
Cutaneous and uveal melanoma are malignant tumours with no treatment available once the metastases occur. Despite both melanomas are highly immunogenic, and often despite the presence of potent... Show moreCutaneous and uveal melanoma are malignant tumours with no treatment available once the metastases occur. Despite both melanomas are highly immunogenic, and often despite the presence of potent anti-tumour immune cells in patients__ blood, in more than 95% of patients, tumour growth remains unaffected. Hereby we investigate the mechanisms that help melanomas to escape from the spontaneous or activated by vaccination cytotoxicity of T lymphocytes and discuss the impact of local microenvironment created by melanoma, focusing on the role of immunomodulatory dendritic cells. Show less
This thesis describes several topics on angiogenesis and screening in uveal melanoma, the most frequent eye tumour in adults. The expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and other... Show moreThis thesis describes several topics on angiogenesis and screening in uveal melanoma, the most frequent eye tumour in adults. The expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and other angiostimulating factors in this tumour are described. In a second part, the use of different screening tests in screening for metastases of uveal melanoma is investigated. Show less
