As a DevelopMed Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, I am committed to advancing childhood cancer research by investigating the biology of neuroblastoma, a complex and aggressive paediatric solid tumour. My research focuses on the high-risk form of the disease, where amplification of the MYCN oncogene is strongly associated with poor prognosis.
The project aims to elucidate the pathway crosstalk regulated by MYCN—specifically, how it alters normal cellular signalling and governs the critical cell fate decisions between proliferation and apoptosis. By employing mass spectrometry-based proteomics combined with systems biology approaches, I am constructing a comprehensive map of MYCN-driven signalling networks to identify potential therapeutic targets that could improve clinical outcomes for affected children.
A distinctive and rewarding aspect of my fellowship is my role as a visiting scientist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), where I collaborate with Dr. Olga Piskareva’s lab, an internationally recognised leader in 3D neuroblastoma research. Here, I am gaining hands-on experience with 3D neuroblastoma spheroid culture systems, which more accurately recapitulate tumour behaviour compared to traditional 2D models. These advanced systems enable a deeper understanding of drug responses, tumour architecture, and cellular interactions in a physiologically relevant context.
This collaborative framework between UCD and RCSI fosters a dynamic, translational research environment and exemplifies the core values of the Marie Curie programme—innovation, collaboration, and real-world impact.
Every stage of this journey—from pathway elucidation to 3D model validation—contributes to the overarching goal of developing more effective, targeted therapies for children diagnosed with neuroblastoma.
I presented a poster on my research into the regulation of GPC2 in lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. The poster session was a great opportunity to share my work, receive constructive feedback, and speak with researchers working on similar topics. These conversations have given me new ideas to take back to the lab.
One of the most valuable sessions for me was the “PPI in Action” workshop, which focused on making patient and public involvement more inclusive. It introduced me to new perspectives on how researchers can engage directly with patients and the public. I left inspired to explore starting a PPI group for lung cancer at my own institution.
Another highlight was the Patrick Johnston Award session, where early-career researchers presented their work in lay terms. It was a strong reminder of the importance of clear, accessible science communication.
Beyond the conference, I enjoyed exploring Belfast—Victoria Square offered amazing views, and the architecture around City Hall was well worth the visit.
Overall, the conference was a great opportunity to connect, learn, and reflect. I’m very grateful to Breakthrough Cancer Research for supporting my attendance and look forward to applying what I learned to my research going forward.
Welcome to my first blog post of the year—and the first in two and a half years. You might be wondering what I’ve been up to during that time. Let me catch you up!
I’m currently pursuing a joint Ph.D. programme between the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Soochow University (SU) in China. For the past two years, I’ve been based at SU. My project has offered me a unique opportunity to experience and compare research environments across two countries, each with its own strengths, workflows, and lab cultures.
So, what is it like working in a Chinese research lab?
Beyond the routine experimental tasks, one of the standout features of this lab is its comprehensive capacity for conducting animal studies—all performed in strict accordance with ethical guidelines. I’ve had the opportunity to observe and work with a wide variety of laboratory animals, including mice and rabbits. Interestingly, depending on the specific needs of a project, researchers can even select animals based on precise characteristics, such as coat colour or genetic background.
In addition to lab work, the research environment here provides frequent opportunities to attend academic conferences and participate in scholarly exchanges. These events are invaluable for sharing findings, building professional networks, and exploring future collaborations—both nationally and internationally.
Outside the lab, work-life balance is also encouraged. My colleagues and I often take part in group outdoor activities like cycling around the nearby lake, camping, and barbecuing. These shared experiences not only bring joy to our daily lives but also help foster stronger team spirit and collaboration.
And the good news is – I have just submitted my PhD thesis! Onwards and Upwards!
The European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) is a registered charity and scientific community that has been holding conferences since 1968. EACR’s annual four-day congress is dedicated to basic, preclinical and translational cancer research. It brings together the cancer research community, including PhD students, postdocs, PIs, and commercial sponsors, for the opportunity to network and collaborate to progress cancer therapeutics.
I was fortunate enough to receive the Breakthrough Cancer Research Education and Travel Award, which made it possible for me to attend this year’s EACR conference held in Lisbon, Portugal. Breakthrough Cancer Research is an Irish Medical research charity focused on improving the outcomes of patients diagnosed with rare and poor prognosis cancers, like neuroblastoma.
When I first arrived at the congress center in Lisbon, I was immediately impressed by how well organized and put together the conference was. A schedule of four full days included speakers, poster presentations, industry talks, a technology exhibition, giveaways, networking rounds, and early-career talks. I checked in, received my “goodie bag” and was on my way to the first talk. For the duration of the conference, you were encouraged to move freely between all the available presentations within several auditoriums and pavilions. They even had screens and speakers set up outside the auditoriums if there was no more space inside to make sure that the research presented was accessible to everyone. The lunch breaks were the perfect time to enjoy the sunshine, walk along the Tagus River, and have a picnic with views of the Ponte 25 de Abril bridge (similar in style to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California).
Exhibitors showcase with over 100 companies available to talk about their technology. QR codes were at each booth to scan for participants to be entered into a drawing for an iPad and free entry to next year’s conference in Budapest, Hungary.
Throughout the conference, I listened to talks that ranged from how estrogen levels in breast cancer are related to the loss of bone density to how we can detect cancer in circulating cells for a diagnosis three years earlier than previous tests. One of the talks began with the necessity for physiologically relevant in vitro to 3D models and then the conclusion of the talk discussed how there’s a bridge needed between academia and industry for treatments to be more streamlined and accessible. Most importantly, I was able to read quite a few posters with research that other PhD students were doing related to small extracellular vesicles (sEVs). My work specifically looks at the relationship between sEVs shared from cancerous to non-cancerous cells and what their functional impact is. A lot of the work I saw was optimization of sEV isolation and characterization, which can be quite tricky to do but was helpful to see what complications others were running into and their troubleshooting results.
Presentation by Cindrilla Chumduri during EACR – EMBO Symposium: Advanced in vitro Models. Chumduri highlights the “valley of death” where there is a gap between academic and industry research that impedes the progression of scientific breakthroughs in cancer research.
By the time it got to my poster defense, I was excited to talk about my work and looking forward to meeting others who might be doing research similar to mine. There were a handful of people that came to speak to me about my work and ask questions. One thing about the PhD journey is that sometimes you can be so deeply involved in your own work and what isn’t going right that you lose sight of how impactful your work can be. When several people approached me about the co-culture model I was using, they were so curious and wanted to implement something like that into their work. Hearing positive feedback on my efforts was a refreshing way to end the conference. At the end of the day, there was a celebration dinner where a traditional Portuguese Fado band played music while we were able to unwind and network with other PhD students. My time spent in Lisbon at EACR was one of the best conference experiences I’ve had. I’m looking forward to heading back into the lab, making progress with my project, and presenting at the next conference.
My poster defense during the Tumor Biology poster sessions.
Special thanks to Breakthrough Cancer Research for supporting my research and providing me with this fantastic opportunity.
Mac4Me goes beyond technical expertise, striving to ensure each doctoral candidate has the tools to flourish both professionally and personally. This commitment was evident in the first training, which covered clinical aspects and requirements related to the three metastatic cancer types Mac4Me is focusing on. Besides advanced scientific methodologies, including single-cell mechanics and organ-on-chip technology, the students gained insights into fundamental biological mechanisms such as tumour formation, immune evasion, and DNA repair deficiency in age-related diseases. The training also explored the ethics of cancer research and included an activity in which the communication team produced short introductory videos featuring each doctoral candidate on the website. A significant part of the training focused on Patient and Public Involvement in Research (PPI). This session, led by patient advocates from Dublin and the US, fostered an immediate connection with the doctoral candidates, emphasising the importance of collaboration and direct patient engagement at every step in the research process. A profound mutual interest in the project’s success was shared.
With nearly all doctoral candidates and principal investigators meeting in person for the very first time, the training and the meeting were marked by a palpable spirit of eagerness and enjoyment. This initial gathering fostered strong team-building among the doctoral candidates and across the various subprojects, laying a crucial foundation for their scientific and technical collaboration. The meeting proved to be a success in promoting the exchange of expertise and significantly strengthening networking opportunities, thereby setting a precedent for ongoing collaboration.
Mac4Me, Rotterdam, June 25-26, 2025
Mac4Me is a Horizon Europe MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) Doctoral Network. The project is led by a core consortium of 14 partners and supported by an additional 11 associated partners. For more information about the consortium and the project, visit the Mac4Me website.
For media inquiries, please contact: mac4me@upf.edu.
I’m Ronja, a final-year PhD student navigating the final stretch of lab work, attempting to weave a cohesive narrative from the experiments—and occasional failures—that I’ve genuinely enjoyed over the past three and a half years. With just four months to go until my submission deadline, the calendar is dotted with wedding invitations, visits from friends eager to see me in Dublin while I’m still here, and one last Irish summer that I’m determined to savour—despite the ever-present stress and a slow, persistent creep of anxiety.
At long last, I’m learning to let go of perfection. I can no longer afford to chase down every loose thread left behind by past experiments. Time is no longer elastic, and what remains must be used with ruthless efficiency. It’s time to channel the inner German: go in, do the work with precision, make it count, and don’t let standards slip.
After years spent crafting a PhD through chapters of optimisation—each concluding with an arbitrary line drawn in the sand, because there’s always room for refinement—it’s a hard lesson to internalise. Eventually, the improvements stop justifying the time and resources they demand. Knowing where to stop might be the hardest skill of all.
Perhaps that, in the end, will be the life lesson my PhD leaves me with: learning how to spend my time in ways that truly matter—ways that serve my goals, whether they’re professional, in service of others, or deeply personal. And with that lesson in hand, I’m quietly hopeful that what comes next will be shaped not just by ambition, but by intention.
We are delighted to provide training and contribute to neuroblastoma research through the Mac4Me Doctoral Network Programme. Mac4Me is a 48-month project that addresses both technical and social challenges in cancer metastasis. It focuses on three tumour types that show poor response to current immunotherapies: neuroblastoma, breast, and prostate cancer. These tumour types reflect cancer development across a person’s lifetime and share metastatic disease spreading to the brain, bone, and liver.
Working alongside researchers and patients, the network will train 18 Doctoral Candidates to study the tumour microenvironment at metastatic sites, with a particular focus on the macrophage immune cell population. It will combine organ-on-chip technology with microfluidic systems to investigate early cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions during tumour invasion. Mac4Me will move beyond traditional “thinking in boxes” approaches by integrating bioinformatics and Artificial Intelligence solutions with real-world clinical data. The project will focus on patient experiences and translate scientific advances into meaningful outcomes.
The kick-off meeting of Mac4Me partners, Feb 2025
We are very proud to train two out of 18 Doctoral Candidates, building upon the expertise of Drs Ian Woods, Adrian Dervan and Prof Fergal O’Brien in biomaterials and 3D bioprinting and Dr Olga Piskareva in neuroblastoma biology and 3D in vitro cancer models.
I’m excited to kick off my second-year PhD journey with a deeper dive into cancer research. This is my first blog post of the year, and I’m eager to share what’s sparking my curiosity. So, I came across a paper by Tivnan et al. (2012), which focused on the targeted delivery of microRNA-34a (miR-34a) using nanoparticles. What intrigued me most was how these nanoparticles are designed to deliver therapies straight to cancer cells. Neuroblastoma is a highly aggressive and difficult-to-treat tumour, so finding a way to target it without affecting healthy cells could be a breakthrough.
Here’s what makes this study so exciting: the team developed a nanoparticle system coated with anti-GD2, a molecule that recognizes and binds to GD2, a marker commonly found on neuroblastoma cells. Think of these GD2-coated nanoparticles as specialized delivery trucks with a precise address—they’re designed to deliver miR-34a.
Now, let’s dive into the details of miR-34a’s role. MiR-34a isn’t just any therapeutic agent—it’s a master regulator capable of influencing multiple genes involved in cell growth, survival, and blood vessel formation. By releasing miR-34a into tumour cells, this study activated pathways that induced cell death and suppressed angiogenesis, preventing the tumour from forming new blood vessels. It’s almost as if miR-34a is a conductor orchestrating a complex, multi-step attack on cancer, using the tumour’s own cellular mechanisms against it.
The Results? A Direct and Multi-Layered Attack on Tumor’s
In their mouse model, the GD2-targeted nanoparticles packed with miR-34a significantly reduced tumour growth. These “smart” nanoparticles didn’t just shrink tumors by inducing apoptosis (cell death); they also cut off the tumor’s blood supply by promoting the expression of TIMP2, an anti-angiogenic protein. Essentially, the tumor cells were directly targeted and deprived of the resources they needed to survive—a powerful one-two punch.
Where Do We Go From Here?
This study is an excellent example of how targeted therapies could evolve to tackle other types of cancer. Traditional therapies, like chemotherapy, often affect both healthy and cancerous cells, leading to significant side effects. In contrast, this targeted approach delivers miR-34a specifically to neuroblastoma cells, which could be especially beneficial for pediatric patients who need treatments that minimize harm to developing bodies. Imagine pairing nanoparticles like these with different therapeutic targets, such as GPC2, ALK, or PDL1, or even combining them with existing treatments to boost effectiveness while minimizing side effects. For those in the field, the potential here feels like a breakthrough waiting to happen.
Neuroblastoma is particularly challenging to treat, especially when tumours become resistant to chemotherapy. This resistance is compounded by tumour heterogeneity—these cancers comprise different cell types, specifically adrenergic and mesenchymal cells. This variability affects treatment responses and plays a role in metastasis and how aggressively the cancer can spread.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules that regulate gene expression, and miR-124-3p has emerged as a promising player in cancer research. A Kaplan–Meier plot in the study (Figure 1) shows a strong association between low miR-124-3p levels and poorer survival rates in neuroblastoma patients, underscoring its potential impact on patient outcomes.
Our group’s study specifically examined how miR-124-3p might help reverse chemotherapy resistance and inhibit tumour cell growth in neuroblastoma. Excitingly, it has the potential to reduce cancer cell survival and increase their sensitivity to chemotherapy—an important breakthrough for treating resistant neuroblastomas.
The study found that miR-124-3p directly targets genes involved in the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a process that makes cancer cells more invasive and treatment-resistant. By suppressing these genes, miR-124-3p can reverse EMT, shifting cells to a less aggressive, more treatment-sensitive state. Our group observed that increased miR-124-3p significantly reduced neuroblastoma cell invasion (Figure 2). In SK-N-AS cells and their drug-resistant form, invasion dropped by 50% and 70%. In Kelly cells and their resistant form, invasion decreased by 10% and 30%. The most invasive of all, the drug-resistant SK-N-ASCis24 cells, showed the most substantial decrease in invasion after miR-124-3p treatment. This suggests that miR-124-3p could help limit neuroblastoma spread, highlighting its therapeutic potential.
While miR-124-3p isn’t part of my project, seeing how different molecular mechanisms can be harnessed to develop cancer therapies is always inspiring. Using miRNAs to sensitize resistant cancer cells to treatment could complement approaches like immunotherapies or vaccines, like the one I’m working on. Understanding these molecular pathways brings fresh perspectives on weakening cancer cells and making treatments more effective.
The RCSI Cancer Bioengineering Group hosted an in-person event during the National PPI Festival 2024 to share their childhood cancer research and connect with the public and patients.
We welcomed members of the public, family members of children with cancer, researchers, clinicians, and patient/community organisations on October 17th. Our past lab members and students paid a visit, too! Our group shared ongoing research on neuroblastoma biology and finding new treatments. Prof Cormac Owens from CHI brought us through the journey of clinical trials in neuroblastoma patients. We heard the heartbreaking story of the brave young man who lost his life to neuroblastoma and his parents who never gave up. This truly inspirational family founded a charity – the Conor Foley Neuroblastoma Cancer Research Foundation, to support curiosity-driven and translationally-focused research. The Foleys know very well how important it is to return happy days to kids and their families.
