Investigation of combinatorial treatment strategies in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Born and raised in beautiful Bucharest, Romania, I started studying medicine at the LMU in 2015 and joined our research group in 2019. When I’m not running around the lab doing western blots, taking care of my cells or preparing for exams – I love to be in the mountains, listen to as much live music as I can, travel and generally keep busy.
Faculty of Medicine - Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich
KRAS-dependency and heterogeneity in PDAC
I completed my BSc studies in Microbiology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2018, and afterwards MSc in Genetics and molecular biosciences at the University of Helsinki, Finland, in 2020. I continued my research for one year at the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia, where I worked in the field of immunology and synthetic biology. Since 2021 I am a PhD student in Saur lab, where I am investigating KRAS dependency and heterogeneity of PDAC tumors, using transgenic mouse models.
Born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, I moved to Germany where I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology in 2021, followed by a Master’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2024. During my master’s studies, my research focused on investigating the role of long non-coding RNAs in hiPSC-derived macrophages in the context of cardiovascular diseases.
In October 2024, I joined the Saur lab as a PhD candidate. My current research aims to analyze the function and dynamics of macrophages in PDAC using mouse models to investigate their role in tumor progression.
I studied Medicine in Rome and, after completing my medical degree in 2015, I began the residency in Medical Oncology in Verona. During my residency, I was involved in clinical and translational research focused on pancreatic cancer and early-phase clinical trials. After completing my residency in 2021, I started a PhD in Molecular Medicine at the University of Turin. Currently, I am spending one and a half years as a research fellow at the Dieter Saur Lab (TUM, Klinikum rechts der Isar), where I am studying the anticancer effects of high-dose vitamin C and the interaction between the homologous recombination-deficient PDAC mouse model and the immune system. As a physician-scientist, my main research is focused on the identification of predictive biomarkers for anticancer agents and drug repurposing.