Sandrine Aspelagh
Medical Oncologist
UZBrussel
Sandrine Aspeslagh is a medical oncologist at the Department of Medical Oncology at UZ Brussel (Brussels, Belgium). Her clinical and research interests center on cancer immunotherapy, with a particular focus on immune-related adverse events, skin cancers (including melanoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma), and urogenital malignancies. She obtained her PhD in immunology in 2012 at Ghent University, where she studied iNKT cells in cancer models. Inspired by the early successes of immune checkpoint inhibition, she pursued further specialization in oncology to translate advances in immunology into patient care. In 2014, she received the Georges Mathé Prize for her work in immunotherapy, which enabled her to join the Drug Development Department (DITEP) as an investigator in multiple early- and late-phase clinical trials. She subsequently worked at Institut Jules Bordet before moving to UZ Brussel. Sandrine Aspeslagh has played a major role in education and capacity building in immune-oncology, organizing training initiatives for oncologists, general practitioners, scientists, and allied healthcare professionals. She is a co-author of several publications in immunotherapy and targeted therapy and supervised the development of the Immunomanager, an online decision-support tool of the Belgian Society of Medical Oncology (BSMO) for the management of immune-related adverse events. In collaboration with BSMO, she initiated the Multidisciplinary Immunotoxicity Board (BITOX) in 2021, which has reviewed nearly 200 complex cases of severe immune-related toxicities, often involving patients with underlying dysimmune conditions. She currently leads the FORX clinical trial, investigating dietary interventions to reduce immune-related adverse events in cancer patients receiving immunotherapy.