Dr. Agustin Enciso Martinez
Research
Worldwide, one out of six deaths are related to cancer. Effective cancer biomarkers should enable minimal residual disease detection, effective disease monitoring, outcome prediction or enable optimal treatment selection. In the last decade, tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (tdEVs) have emerged as an important biomarker because they contain information about the molecular profile of the tumor, revealing its heterogeneity and dynamics during treatment. Additionally, their presence in body fluids, such as blood, makes them easily retrievable from patients. Lastly, the load of large tdEVs in peripheral blood is strongly associated with poor clinical outcome. Hence, we are interested in using tdEVs as cancer biomarkers. We aim at selectively isolating and characterizing tdEVs from the blood of metastatic breast cancer patients by combining various methods to obtain crucial information about the cancer in situ.
Curriculum Vitae
I am very interested in the study of tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (tdEVs) and their contribution to cancer metastasis. I am originally from Mexico and graduated from a bachelor’s and master’s degree in biomedical engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey, and at KU Leuven, respectively. I obtained my PhD from the University of Twente (UT, 2016-2020), under the guidance of prof. L. Terstappen and Dr. C. Otto, where I worked on the development of label-free detection and characterization methods of individual cells and extracellular vesicles, using electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and optical tweezers. I continued as a postdoc at the UT, working on various strategies to selectively visualize and isolate tdEVs. I have completed multiple research stays, including at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC) in Leuven, Belgium; at Johns Hopkins Hospital and at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, in USA. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Cell and Chemical Biology department of LUMC under the guidance of prof. Peter ten Dijke. My research project at the LUMC is part of Medical Delta and Oncode Institute. I also enjoy writing popular science articles.
