Cornelis (Kees) Melief is Head of the Dept. of Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion at the Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands. Cornelis received his M.D. degree in 1970 and his Ph.D. degree in 1967 from the University of Amsterdam. Cornelis completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the New England Medical Center and Dana Farber Cancer Center, Boston, USA. In 1975 Cornelis became a staff member of the Netherlands Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service and in 1985 he became the head of the Dept. of Tumor Immunology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam. Cornelis came to his current position in 1991. Cornelis’s work has contributed fundamental insights into the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing the generation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) responses. Cornelis has also pioneered the use the of CTL-dependent responses in adoptive immunotherapy of cancer, providing the first evidence that CTLs specific for an oncogene tumor antigen could eradicate large vascularized tumors in mice.  

 Immunohematology, Blood Transfusion, Tumor Immunology, Cellular and Molecular Mechanism