Poster award for Aristeidis Papargyriou
During the last TEMTIA X conference held by the EMT International Association in November 2022 in Paris, our PhD student Aris Papargyriou presented his latest work on how epithelial-to-mesenchymal plasticity drives intra-tumoral phenotypic heterogeneity using branching PDAC organoids as a model system. Aris gave a talk at the early career forum for young scientists and presented a poster for which he was awarded an Outstanding Poster Award by the jury!
Poster prize for Raphela Ranjan
At the 3rd MGC Science Day in TUM, our PhD student Raphela Ranjan's poster was selected as the best poster and awarded with the first prize. Raphela introduced the conference participants to the PDO-on-CAM model that she employed in our lab. She combined the PDO model and the chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane assay to develop the PDO-on-CAM model to study tumor morphogenesis and metastatic dissemination in pancreatic cancer patient derived organoids. Congratulations to her!
Publication in EMBO Molecular Medicine
Check out our latest publication "Identification of treatment-induced vulnerabilites in pancreatic cancer patients using functional model systems" in EMBO Molecular Medicine:
Despite the advance and success of precision oncology in gastrointestinal cancers, the frequency of molecular-informed therapy decisions in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is currently neglectable. We present a longitudinal precision oncology platform based on functional model systems, including patient-derived organoids, to identify chemotherapy-induced vulnerabilities. We demonstrate that treatment-induced tumor cell plasticity in vivo distinctly changes responsiveness to targeted therapies, without the presence of a selectable genetic marker, indicating that tumor cell plasticity can be functionalized. By adding a mechanistic layer to precision oncology, adaptive processes of tumors under therapy can be exploited, particularly in highly plastic tumors, such as pancreatic cancer.
Poster prize for Katja Peschke
Congratulations to our PhD student Katja Peschke for winning a poster prize at the SFB1321 Young Scientists Retreat 2021 in Munich.
She presented her work about label-free phenotyping using digital holographic microscopy to characterize intratumoral heterogeneity in pancreatic cancer in real time.