Through this ride, Adem and Peter-Jan are raising funds for a specific research project at the Oncode Institute, a leading Dutch cancer research institute with one clear mission: to outsmart cancer and impacting lives. By combining world-class science with close collaboration, Oncode accelerates discoveries that have the potential to fundamentally improve cancer treatment.

They are cycling in support of research into the body’s natural cycles and how breast cancer treatment could become more effective by working with these cycles instead of against them. With this ride, Adem and Peter-Jan want to raise awareness, highlight the wider societal impact of the research, and bring people together around this fundraising journey.

Listening to the Body's Rythm

For decades, cancer treatment has followed carefully designed protocols. Powerful medicines. Fixed schedules. Standard approaches designed to work for as many people as possible.

But bodies are not standard.

The human body moves in rhythms. Hormones rise and fall. The immune system responds differently from one moment to the next. And yet, for a long time, those natural cycles were treated as background noise in medical research.

Researchers at the Oncode Institute began asking a different question: what if the hormonal cycle isn’t a detail – but part of the success?

In fundamental research, they observed something striking: the very same chemotherapy can have dramatically different effects depending on when it is given within the hormonal cycle. Not because the medicine changed - but because the body did.

Blood vessels subtly open and close. The immune system shifts its response. “Small” biological changes based on where patients are in the cycle, but with potentially large consequences for how well treatment reaches and affects a tumour. Not proven yet in human treatment - but promising enough to take the next step.

That next step is a dedicated clinical study, supported by Oncode Institute, focused on breast cancer in humans. A study that doesn’t look for new medicines, but for better timing. It comes with the potential to make existing treatments more effective, and care more personal.

At the heart of this research is Jacco van Rheenen, an Oncode Investigator who has spent years trying to understand not just how cancer behaves, but how the body responds to treatment. His work is driven by curiosity, but also by a willingness to question assumptions that have long been taken for granted.

When early signals suggested that the timing of chemotherapy might matter - that the same treatment could work differently depending on the body’s natural rhythm - Jacco didn’t dismiss it as coincidence or complexity. He leaned into it. Supported by Oncode Institute, he was able to follow this insight from the lab toward a real clinical study, working closely with clinicians and patient representatives to ensure the research stays grounded in real lives.

It is this combination - deep scientific rigour, openness to new perspectives, and focus on patient impact - that makes this research so powerful. Not a promise of miracles, but a serious step toward care that better understands the people it is meant to help.