Lukas Maass
Situated Cancer Care in Precision Oncology: Aligning Biomedical Innovation and Social Contexts for Lynch Syndrome in Europe
Department of Sustainable Development (Copernicus Institute), Faculty of Geoscience, Utrecht University
Supervisors: prof.dr. Wouter Boon, dr. Susan van Hees, dr. Claudia Egher
Background
Lukas holds a BSc in Biology from the University of Innsbruck and previously worked as a molecular oncology lab technician. Seeking experience beyond the natural sciences, he
completed an MSc in Global Health at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he explored how social science approaches support health research. He conducted mixedmethods research on cultural stigma related to neglected tropical diseases and applied STS approaches to study Europe’s pharmaceutical ecosystem. After working as a storytelling tour guide and in NTD advocacy, he returns to academia to pursue a PhD within the PREDI-Lynch project.
Content
Healthcare has been impacted by major technological innovations over the last few decades. These developments have put precision oncology at the heart of the field of cancer, marking the beginning of a new medical paradigm. A paradigm that offers research and tailored detection and treatment options based on an individual’s molecular and genomic profile. A paradigm that is often accompanied by lofty promises of improving health and transforming care.
Genetic screening, for instance, has increased the identification of individuals living with hereditary cancer conditions. One such condition is Lynch Syndrome (LS), which significantly elevates the risk of endometrial, colorectal, and urothelial cancers. While detection of LS carriers has improved, effective strategies to reduce the associated cancer risks are limited. When effective risk-identification strategies exist, their benefits may be unevenly distributed across society. When precision oncology becomes the dominant paradigm, it has far-reaching epistemic consequences.
This underscores the need for effective cancer screening strategies for LS carriers that account for diverse social, cultural, economic, and political contexts, and are sensitive to their epistemic implications.
The PREDI-Lynch project’s goal is to develop, validate, and scale existing and novel precision oncology diagnostic technologies for LS carriers in Europe. Within PREDILynch, I aim to address the need for contextually and epistemically sensitive cancer screening strategies. I will be doing this by critically examining the link between technological innovation and context-sensitive forms of cancer care, exploring how the resulting insights can be integrated into innovation-oriented health projects like PREDILynch, and investigating the implications of different dimensions of cancer epistemics for contextually and sensitive screening programs.
I aim to do so by applying and integrating theories and concepts from Science and Technology Studies (STS), medical sociology, and medical anthropology, using preventive precision oncology in endometrial, colorectal, and urothelial cancers within PREDI-Lynch as potential case studies.
