dr. Suzanne Vanhauwaert (PhD)

Within the Claes lab and MDG we use next generation sequencing in a clinical setting. In the hereditary setting, NGS and MLPA are used to identify those patients who have a germline pathogenic variant in a cancer predisposing gene and are as such high risk for the development of cancer. Within MDG,NGS is used for the detection of SNVs, indels, CNVs and fusions in DNA/RNA of tumour tissue, blood or bone marrow samples of cancer patients. The presence of certain genetic defects can help to predict therapy response, can guide the diagnosis and/or can fine tune the prognosis of cancer patients with solid tumors or hematological malignancies. 
 

I obtained my master in Biochemistry and Biotechnology in June 2011 at the KU Leuven where I was also awarded with a prize of the PDL Leuven for being the best master student in biochemistry and biotechnology for the academic year 2010-2011. After obtaining my master degree, I immediately started with a PhD in the lab of Professor Speleman where I mainly focused on the use of zebrafish as a model for Neuroblastoma and T-ALL (T-cell acute lymphoblastic Leukemia). During my PhD I also spent 10 months in the lab of A. Thomas Look (Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA) where I was further trained in the use of zebrafish as a model for cancer.
In May 2017 I obtained my PhD degree, and immediately after that I continued my research as a Post-doc in the Speleman lab. Since January 2021, I switched gears and became assisted lab supervisor within MDG and the lab of hereditary cancers (supervised by prof. dr. Kathleen Claes). 
 

• address: Center for Medical Genetics, MRB-UZ, Corneel Heymanslaan 10, 9000 Gent
• Speleman lab
• Center for Medical Genetics Ghent
• Orcid ID