Alice Sijts’ research focuses on the cellular processes underlying immune defense against intracellular pathogens and tumor growth. She is an expert in the field of proteasome biology and MHC class I antigen processing, and studies how inflammation-induced changes in this processing pathway support the development of protective immunity. She translates obtained knowledge to develop novel immunotherapies, as well as next generation vaccines against ‘hard-to-treat’ and emerging pathogens.

Alice Sijts obtained her PhD from Leiden University in The Netherlands, in tumor immunology. She got introduced into research on intracellular bacteria during a postdoc in the lab of Eric Pamer at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Thereafter, she has held research groups in Berlin, Germany, and in Rochester, NY, USA, where she studied the intracellular, proteasome-mediated processing of pathogen derived proteins, before taking her line of research to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Besides funding through VacPath, aimed at development of novel vaccines to protect against intracellular bacteria and viruses, she is currently funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), for fundamental research on antigen processing. She further participates in an Innovative Training Network, developing novel antibody-based tumor therapies (‘TumorTregTargeting’).