Professor of pathology, in particular breast pathology, by special appointment. Affiliation: Netherlands Cancer Institute - Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Amsterdam, on behalf of the LUMC. Recent awards 2017: Cancer Research UK Grand Challenge Award (in partnership with the Dutch Cancer Society). 2018: Value-based Health Care Dragon Grant Award for the LORD trial. 2020: Nominated for the AACR Scientific Achievement Award.

More information about Jelle Wesseling

Breast pathology

Regarding the experience and skills of Prof. Jelle Wesseling in clinical, diagnostic breast pathology, he is internationally acknowledged as consultant breast pathologist as well as supervisor of residents in pathology. He is co-authoring a number of books on breast pathology, including the latest edition of the WHO-book on classification of tumors.

Regarding educational and mentoring activities, Jelle Wesseling is a highly rated lecturer and invited speaker at a multitude of meetings, institutes, and universities for a variety of audiences, such as students, patient organizations, oncologists, surgeons, epidemiologists, and pathologists. He has much appreciated mentoring skills in guiding PhD students, both in his own team as well as across the institute. He also brings the message of his research across to the Dutch society frequently, as illustrated by multiple appearances in national newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, and Dutch television news shows.

Academic career

Professor Jelle Wesseling achieved his MD in Medicine and MSc in Chemistry, both cum laude, at the University of Groningen and at the Free University of Amsterdam. He received his PhD at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in 1997, studying the role of MUC1 (EMA) in cell adhesion, signaling and invasion in cancer, supervised by Prof. Piet Borst, Prof. Carl Figdor and Dr. John Hilkens. In 2004, he was registered as pathologist after five years of training at the University Medical Center in Groningen. He held his inaugural lecture ‘Breast cancer: less is more’ at the Leiden University on May 24, 2019. He is consultant breast pathologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute – Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Leiden University Medical Center. His training both as basic scientist and as practicing clinical pathologist provides the ideal skillset for combining these two worlds to achieve a comprehensive transition from bench-to-bedside.

His overarching research focus is to develop new strategies to substantially improve the prognostic and predictive power of breast cancer pathology and to understand the underlying biology. Ultimately, he aims to define with high accuracy who to treat, how to treat and, if so, for what benefit and so achieve the best benefit-to-harm ratio for women with DCIS and IBC. A major highlight of his career was receiving the Cancer Research UK Grand Challenge Award ‘When cancer is not really cancer’ in 2017. In partnership with KWF Dutch Cancer Society, this award comes with 15-million-Euro funding and was based on his previous DCIS research and his initiative to build a strong, multidisciplinary, global team of experts to PREvent ductal Carcinoma In SItu Overtreatment Now (PRECISION).

Publications