Stephani Schmitz has started her secondment in the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway

Stephani Schmitz, our ESR2 working with Dr. Rebekka Schneider at Erasmus Medical Center, Netherlands, is doing her secondment at the lab of Emmet McCormack at the University of Bergen, Norway.

During her secondment, Stephani is working on developing a Patient-Derived Xenograft (PDX) model. This model involves transplanting human cells with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) into immunocompromised mice, allowing researchers to study the disease in a living organism.

In her experiments, Stephani is working on transplanting samples from one patient with the del(5q) MDS phenotype into mice by testing two different methods. Then, she is monitoring the mice over time to assess the success of the engraftment and checking if they develop the del(5q) MDS phenotype.

If the PDX model works, Stephani aims to use it to validate therapeutic targets found previously in in vitro and in vivo mouse studies.