Karijn Suijkerbuijk is Professor of Immunotherapy in solid tumors and medical oncologist at the UMC Utrecht Cancer Center in the Netherlands. She is PI of several multicentre studies in the field of melanoma and immunotherapy. She has been invited speaker on these topics at several international meetings and had co-authored more than 137 scientific publications, including as lead author in JAMA Oncology, Annals of Oncology, Nature Cancer and Journal of Clinical Oncology. Within ESMO, Professor Suijkerbuijk is a member of the real-world data and digital health working group, melanoma faculty coordinator and was melanoma track chair for ESMO 2024. 

Karijn Suijkerbuijk underwent general medical training in Utrecht, followed by a PhD at Utrecht University and Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, USA. She completed her medical oncology training at the University Medical Center Utrecht and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) and was appointed as medical oncology consultant in Utrecht in 2016. She was appointed Associate Professor in 2019 and Full Professor at Utrecht University in 2022.

Her research interests include melanoma treatment, immunotherapeutic approaches in immunologically cold tumors and management of immune related adverse events (irAEs), Currently, she is scientific chair of the Dutch Melanoma Treatment Registry (DMTR), the largest nationwide registry of advanced melanoma worldwide. As PI of the PREMIUM, she coordinates a nationwide project building AI-algorithms using clinical data, CT-scans and pathology-images of 1500 advanced melanoma patients to predict response to checkpoint inhibition. Furthermore, she leads the phase 1 iFOCUS study, studying the potential synergistic effects of checkpoint inhibition and histotripsie and is the PI of the translational UNICIT project, studying irAE pathogenesis. She serves as an advisor to the patient advocacy group Stichting Melanoom.