Hi there! During the following weeks, our blog will be dedicated to our SIOP Young Investigator Award winners!
Please meet Nathalie Lak, YI from The Netherlands, in her own words.
In the Netherlands, for many young doctors wanting to get into pediatric residency, a PhD project is their ticket in. However, I managed to get in by building clinical experience by working in some pediatric departments. At the end of my residency, I figured that research was something I would not be doing. It was then that one of my residency colleagues asked around if we knew a suitable PhD student for the project she was going to supervise as a Post Doc. It would be on the use of liquid biopsies in pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma. I had never heard about ‘liquid biopsies’ and first thought that it was some fancy new tumor biopsy technique. When liquid biopsies actually turned out to be the minimal invasive sampling of body fluids like blood, I got much more interested. The concept of detecting biomarkers in blood, without exposing patients to further invasive interventions, really motivated me. Also the lab-based and hands-on approach necessary for the development of these molecular markers appealed to me.
So, ever since I have been working on this project. I still do clinical duties 2 months per year and I will finish my residency at the end of this PhD project. As a pediatrician, I would like to work as a pediatric oncologist and combine this with research. Many potential biomarkers never make their way from the bench to the bedside. I would like to improve this process and make sure that patients really benefit from all the research conducted in this field.
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