VitroScan awarded Kansen voor West grant to advance ex vivo tumor testing for next-generation immunotherapies
29 October 2025
VitroScan awarded Kansen voor West grant to advance ex vivo tumor testing for next-generation immunotherapies
Leiden, the Netherlands, October 29th 2025 – VitroScan, a biotechnology company pioneering predictive ex vivo tumor testing, announced that it has been awarded a Kansen voor West grant to further develop its ex vivo 3D micro-tumor platform for evaluating innovative immunotherapies.
Immunotherapies have transformed cancer care by mobilizing the immune system to fight tumors. However, their development is often limited by preclinical models that fail to recapitulate human tumor biology, resulting in poor clinical translation.
The STRIPE project brings together VitroScan, Imuno, and the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam to address this challenge. Using advanced immunopeptidomics and antibody engineering, the consortium partners will identify tumor-specific antigens and develop T cell engagers that target them. The project will focus on cancers with a high unmet medical need, including ovarian and colorectal cancer.
VitroScan will apply its ex vivo platform to assess the efficacy of these novel T cell engagers in patient-derived tumor samples, enabling near clinical testing. In-depth characterization of their anti-tumor and immune activity, as well as biomarker discovery will support patient stratification and accelerate clinical translation of these novel therapies.
“Current preclinical models largely fail to capture the complexity of human tumors and their microenvironment,” said Dr. Willemijn Vader, CEO of VitroScan. “By leveraging our ex vivo platform to assess new immunotherapies developed in this consortium, we aim to accelerate clinical translation and improve patient access to effective cancer treatments.”
The STRIPE project has been awarded €998.605 by Kansen voor West, jointly supported by Provincie Zuid Holland and the European Union.
About VitroScan
VitroScan is transforming cancer therapy through predictive ex vivo tumor testing. Its proprietary 3D micro-tumor platform has been shown to predict clinical responses to platinum-based chemotherapy (Koedoot et al., npj Precision Oncology, 2025), and ex vivo immune responses correlate with established clinical biomarkers. By applying this unique approach, VitroScan helps to identify treatments most likely to benefit (individual) patients – enabling access to effective therapies and brining precision medicine closer to clinical reality.