Onno Kranenburg (1966) obtained a degree in Chemistry from the University of Leiden in 1991. In 1991 he started his PhD training in the Department of Medical Biology in the University of Leiden headed by Prof. Alex J. van der Eb. His PhD research was aimed at understanding the function of cyclin D1 in cellular transformation, differentiation and cell death.
In 1995 he obtained his PhD and started as a post-doc in the group of Wouter Moolenaar at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. From 1995-2000 he studied how signaling through the G protein coupled receptor for lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) activates Ras and Rho GTPases. In 2000 he moved to the Department of Medical Oncology at the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) to join the group of Professor Emile Voest as a senior post-doc. In 2003, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Surgical Oncology department headed by Professor Inne Borel Rinkes. In 2006 he was appointed Associate Professor and staff member of the Surgery Department. Since 2008 he is vice-chairman of the Science Committee of the division of Surgical Specialties. He currently heads the Surgical Oncology Research group in close collaboration with Prof Borel Rinkes. He is also head of the Surgery Lab and initiator of the SPECS (spheroids enriched for cancer stem cells) project, which aims to generate cancer stem cell cultures from resection specimens of a variety of tumor types, most prominently colorectal cancer.
Research in his group is focused on understanding how deregulation of apoptosis pathways contributes to the formation of metastases and to chemotherapy resistance in colorectal cancer. Particular attention is paid to the role of cancer stem cells (aka tumor-initiating cells) in both phenomena. Please see ‘Research Interests’ for more information.