Oncode Investigator Alexander van Oudenaarden is one of the pioneers in the field of single-cell sequencing. From his lab at the Hubrecht Institute, the company Single Cell Discoveries was launched with the help of the valorization team of Oncode. This will make single-cell sequencing available for the broader research community. Founders Judith Vivié and Mauro Muraro have grown the company which now has a team of almost 30 people.

Oncode is pleased to have a role in the 4.UNCAN.eu initiative initiated in Paris last year. Arising from the EU’s Mission on Cancer and Europe’s Beating Cancer plan, the initiative is focused on generating a research roadmap to better UNderstand poorly understood CANcers (UNCAN). Oncode Investigators Rene Medema, Jos Jonkers, and Geert Kops were involved in this initiative.

Oncode stimulates collaborations between its researchers and private partners. At the end of 2021, we established a partnership between global biopharma company UCB and Oncode Investigators Jos Jonkers and Peter ten Dijke. In a collaborative research project they are trying to better understand how to target the tumor microenvironment in breast cancer models. 

Oncode Institute was one of the driving forces behind the successful Oncode-PACT growth fund application. Oncode-PACT has the ambition to develop new effective cancer drugs faster and more cost-effectively. The consortium - consisting of more than 40 public and private parties from different corners of the oncology ecosystem - aims to innovate the preclinical drug development process by bringing patients into the lab. Key technologies such as organoids and AI will play a major role in the set up.

During the chaos that COVID-19 caused worldwide, Oncode Investigators Marvin Tanenbaum and Wouter de Laat decided to put their knowledge and skills to good use. Using very high throughput robotics, they designed a COVID-19 screening robot that was able to increase the capacity of the PCR based screening procedure enormously. From available technology funds, Oncode Institute pre-financed the purchase of the custom built robot to make it accessible as quickly as possible.

To accelerate the translation of our research, we have established the Oncode Oncology Bridge Fund. With this we support the creation and operations of our own spin-off companies, which are based on the excellent science that is performed by our Oncode Investigators. Three great examples of start-ups that sprouted from Oncode labs are Cyclomics (by OI Jeroen de Ridder), Oncosense (by OI René Bernards) en Immagene (by OI Daniel Peeper).

Check out these start-ups yourself: