Caro Bienstman
Doctoral fellow - Lab of Translational Onco-genomics and Bio-informatics (TOBI), Center for Medical Biotechnology (VIB-UGent)
Principal investigator: prof. Katleen De Preter (PhD)
Research focus
Neuroblastoma is the most common solid tumor in infants and young children. While some patients respond well to therapy, those with high-risk neuroblastoma often face relapse due to the tumor’s ability to adapt and become resistant to treatment. This is driven by cellular plasticity, with epigenetic modifications contributing to the ability of tumor cells to alter their functional state and resist treatment. Understanding when and how these changes occur could help predict resistance earlier and guide more effective treatment decisions.
My research focuses on developing a liquid biopsy assay to monitor cellular plasticity in high-risk neuroblastoma by analyzing epigenetic alterations from cell-free DNA (cfDNA) circulating in the bloodstream. For this, single-cell and spatial techniques are used to identify and characterize neuroblastoma tumor cell plasticity in animal models and human samples as reference.