Prof. Annemiek van Spriel, Ph.D., is full Professor of Experimental Immunology at Radboud university medical center, The Netherlands. At the Medical BioSciences department, Van Spriel focuses on the role of membrane proteins in the immune response against cancer. Annemiek van Spriel obtained a Cum Laude Master of Science degree in Medical Biology from Utrecht University in 1996. In 2001 she obtained her PhD on research into neutrophil Fc receptors at Utrecht University. She was awarded fellowships from the Dutch Cancer Society and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research to work as Postdoctoral fellow at the Leukocyte Membrane Protein Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia. Since 2004, she has been working at the Tumor Immunology dept. at the Radboudumc. She received NWO-VIDI, Aspasia, ERC CoG, and ERC PoC Grants and became full Professor and team leader of the Tetraspanin Research Group. She is President of the Dutch Society for Immunology (elected in 2023), and organized the FASEB Immunoreceptor and Immunotherapy Conference in the US (2024, 2026).

Her research focuses on understanding the biology of membrane organization in the immune system which ensures proper cell function. Her team has made fundamental contributions to comprehending the function of tetraspanin proteins in the immune system and in cancer cells. She discovered that tetraspanins can protect against development of B-cell lymphoma, and that impaired membrane organization results in signaling defects and immune deficiencies. The team combines cellular immunology with preclinical mouse models to unravel plasma membrane organization in health and disease in order to improve cancer immunotherapy.

Tetraspanins, a superfamily of four-transmembrane proteins, are key organizers of membrane proteins and signalling molecules into specialized nanodomains essential for immune cell function. Despite their importance, the concept of membrane organization is often overlooked, with immune receptors still depicted as static single entities. In reality, immune functions depend on the dynamic spatiotemporal distribution of these receptors at the plasma membrane.

I will present our latest findings on the roles of tetraspanins CD37 and CD20 in lymphocytes and B cell lymphoma. CD20 is a key therapeutic target in B cell malignancies and autoimmune diseases, yet its biological function remains poorly understood. Using cell surface proteomics, we characterized the membrane organization of CD20 and identified CD70, a costimulatory molecule, as a novel binding partner. Our data reveal that CD20 is essential for immune synapse formation between B and T cells, mediating CD70 recruitment and promoting T cell activation. These findings uncover a previously unrecognized role for CD20 in B–T cell interactions, with implications for immunotherapy.

CD37 is highly expressed on mature B lymphocytes and multiple CD37-targeting therapies are under clinical development for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. We demonstrate that CD37 negatively regulates IL-6 receptor signalling at the B cell surface, and that CD37 deficiency drives spontaneous B cell lymphoma development in mice. Importantly, CD37 expression serves as an independent prognostic marker in patients with diffuse large B cell lymphoma, predicting clinical outcomes independent of the International Prognostic Index (IPI) or cell-of-origin classification. Moreover, we developed a novel therapeutic platform to target CD37 and CD20 in B cell lymphoma that outperforms standard-of-care antibody therapy. Together, our data demonstrates that tetraspanins are essential for immune cell function, which provides opportunities to develop new therapeutic approaches that act via the modulation of membrane organisation.