Nathalie Lak

Nathalie Lak, MD, has worked on a PhD project on liquid biopsies in rhabdomyosarcoma. Within this project, she developed several molecular techniques to detect disseminated disease in blood and bone marrow of patients with rhabdomyosarcoma. She demonstrated that presence of tumor-specific RNA and DNA at diagnosis is associated with poor clinical outcome. These molecular techniques could potentially improve current risk stratification and eventually survival. She will continue as a clinical research fellow in pediatric oncology, combining clinical work as a pediatric oncologist in training with post-doctoral research. She will implement a pipeline for the collection and analysis of liquid biopsies for patients with central nervous tumors at the Princess Máxima Center. Furthermore, she will continue with research on liquid biopsies in pediatric sarcoma. Her ultimate goal is implementation of liquid biopsy-based techniques in clinical practice to subject patients to less invasive procedures and improve outcome.