Prize of the Teufel Foundation for Nicole Anderle
Yesterday (October 16, 2024), NMI employee Dr. Nicole Anderle was awarded the Reinhold-und-Maria Teufel Foundation Prize for her doctorate on precision oncology. The prize is endowed with 5,000 euros and was presented to the scientist at the foundation’s headquarters in Tuttlingen.
The challenges in cancer therapy are immense, especially the resistance to therapy in patients with very heterogeneous tumors. Innovative approaches such as functional precision oncology offer promising prospects for developing personalized treatment concepts and optimizing the effectiveness of therapies.
New approach for a tumor model
This is where Nicole Anderle’s research comes in. In her doctoral thesis, supervised by NMI Director Prof. Katja Schenke-Layland, she describes the development of a novel approach for the efficient generation of a clinically relevant, patient-derived ex vivo tumor model that makes it possible to identify individual therapy responses and mechanisms of treatment resistance. The research focus is on the development of a 3D tumor model that accurately reflects the intertumoral heterogeneity as well as the tumor-individual, intratumoral heterogeneity of each tumor and its tumor microenvironment. The title of her work is “Enhancing Precision Oncology: Preclinical Assessment of Individual Drug Treatment Susceptibility Using Patient-Derived 3D Microtumor and Immune Cell Co-cultures”.
Dr. Max Urbanczyk, an employee of the Schenke-Layland Lab, also received an award.
The Teufel Foundation “promotes the scientific training and further education of highly talented young scientists in the fields of law and biology”. Researchers must have studied for at least two years, be no older than 32 and be affiliated with the University of Tübingen. The foundation makes it possible to visit other research laboratories and specialist conferences as well as research stays. It also awards annual doctoral prizes to several outstanding doctoral theses.
