Thesis Defense Pranav Mehta

September 3, 2026

Thesis defense: September 4th, 2026 at the Academie gebouw Leiden

PhD-candidate: Pranav Mehta

Title: Conversations in the tumor microenvironment: Experimental models of fi broblast driven cancer cell invasion

Thesis Advisor: Prof. Dr. Peter ten Dijke & Dr. Pouyan Boukany

Groups

Chemical Immunology - Neefjes lab

Studying the basis of the immune system, bacterial infections and anti-cancer drugs.
Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery - van der Heden & Mulder & Geurink labs

Profiling the Ubiquitin-Proteasome System
Small Ubiquitin-like Modifiers - Vertegaal Lab

Uncovering signal transduction by SUMO
Chemical Signaling - ten Dijke lab

Cell-to-cell communication via secreted factors, transmembrane receptors and intracellular signal transducers
DNA Replication & Repair - Lamers Lab

Molecular mechanisms of high-fidelity DNA replication
Genome Editing - Goncalves & Mikkers Lab

Developing and integrating gene delivery and gene editing systems
Functional Genomics - Pang Lab

Profiling the non-coding genome
Cardiovascular Cell Biology - Goumans Lab

Where data science, virus and stem-cell biology is used to understand disease and develop therapeutics.
Diabetes Research - 't Hart & Zaldumbide Lab

Molecular mechanisms of Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes
Electron microscopy research - Koster Lab

Cryo Electron Tomography and Artificial Intelligence methods
Molecular tumour genetics - Szuhai Lab

Molecular cytogenetics and functional characterization of bone and soft tissue tumours
Transcriptional Regulation - Baker lab
Virus Cell Interactions - Hoeben Lab

From innate sensing to oncolysis
Circadian Clocks - Meijer Lab

Investigating sleep regulation and sleep function
Near patient diagnostics - Corstjens Lab

High sensitivity diagnostic tools
RNA virus infection - Barcena Lab
Microbial Immunity - Loeff Lab

Uncovering microbial defense mechanisms through structural and biochemical approaches to reveal immunity principles and enable new biotechnological applications
Gribnau lab