Leila Akkari, PhD

Group Leader @Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) & Oncode Institute

Amsterdam, Netherlands


Leila Akkari is Assistant Professor and Junior Group Leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. She obtained a PhD in Molecular Oncology in 2011 (Montpellier, France) and then performed her postdoctoral training in cancer biology, immunology and genetics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, USA, She joined the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, where she established her research laboratory in 2017. In 2019, she was selected as a Junior Member of the Oncode Institute.

Since early on in her scientific career, she has been interested in understanding the complex interactions between cancer cells and normal cells within tumors and she works towards elucidating how external signals regulate cancer malignancy. Research in her group focuses on the role of immune cells, particularly macrophages  in tumor maintenance and therapeutic resistance in brain and liver cancer, in order to harness these cells in personalized anti-cancer treatments.

She is recipient of several research grants, such as the Vidi Research Grant from the Dutch Science Research Council (NWO) in 2020 and three research grants from the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF), including the Young Investigator Grant, Bas Mulder Award in 2017. In 2020, she was selected by the renowned life sciences organization European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) for their Young Investigator Program.

Visit the speaker’s lab here︎
Know more about the speaker here︎