Lies (liz) Bogaert

Biography

Lies is a Doctor in Veterinary Sciences with extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry, academia and hospital settings. In her last job, before relocating to the Los Angeles Area, she managed a team of technicians working on projects in the Preclinical Immunology Group within the Viral Vaccine Department of Crucell/Johnson&Johnson. She also coordinated outsourced studies, in the field of respiratory disease.  From 2008-2011 she performed research as a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, Belgium. Previously, she had acquired several grants from the Fulbright Commission for Educational Exchange between the USA, Belgium and Luxembourg and from the National Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) to do research as an exchange postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Research Interest

Her work was performed at the Department of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology lead by Prof. Dr. W. Martin Kast, an expert in the field of cancer immunotherapeutics. Her main research goal in that project was to develop a therapeutic vaccine against bovine papillomavirus induced equine sarcoids, an aggressive non-lethal skin tumor in horses. This project, which was done in collaboration with 2 industry partners, lead to the acquirement of elaborate experience in many aspects of translational research, such as developing mouse tumor models for animal malignancies and cell-based ex vivo assays. During her training as doctoral and postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University she gained a lot of experience in a variety of molecular and biological techniques, including a variety of immunological techniques, qPCR, mammalian cell culture, immunohistochemistry as well as in designing new projects in the animal papillomavirus field. Furthermore she has a wide clinical experience in diagnostics and therapy (surgical and non-surgical) of equine oncology (skin and external mucosae).