Martha O’Brien
I’m excited to collaborate with the fantastic team at the Máxima, expand my bioinformatics skillset, and contribute to research with the potential to directly impact patient outcomes.
Thanks to the Grasshopper program I will be moving from Heidelberg to Utrecht to complete a 6-month placement at the Princess Maxima, focusing on pediatric neuroblastoma. The immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment still proves a key obstacle in advancing treatments for neuroblastoma patients. However, by combining insights from genomics, transcriptomics and single-cell technologies, we can gain a more comprehensive picture of factors that might drive differential immune responses in patients, and thereby inform more precise, patient-tailored treatments.
My goal for the coming 6 months will be to integrate various omics data to identify immunoreactive T-cells and their antigens in pediatric neuroblastoma. I will also use these data to study how different immune cells interact within the tumor microenvironment, with the goal of understanding the interactions that could affect how patients respond to treatment, and how we can exploit them to improve therapy response.
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