October 2022 – Monthly portrait of a young researcher 

Maya Jeje Schuang Lü, PhD Student, MD

Maya Jeje Schuang Lü is a MD from the University of Copenhagen and has finished her first-year residency in Medical Oncology prior to starting her PhD-project which is a translational glioblastoma research project combining three of the DCCC Brain Tumor Center’s work packages.

In the WP 1, the RNA single cell sequencing is performed before and after drug treatment on patient-derived organoids, to see what happens to the different cell types and to get a better understanding of the clonal evolution and resistance mechanisms in response to drug treatment.

In the WP 2, the ex vivo drug screening is used to find potential therapeutic clinically relevant drugs for the individual patient, who donated the glioblastoma tissue inwhich the organoids are derived from. 

In the WP 15, the results of the WP 1 and the WP 2 are coupled directly to the clinical phase 2 trial Protarget where the patient can be offered individualized treatment using clinically approved drugs prescribed off-label at tumor recurrence.

Maya Jeje Schuang Lü is a PhD student in the group of Joachim Weischenfeldt at Finsen Laboratory. Her project aims to understand clonal evolution and resistance mechanisms in response to drug treatment on glioblastoma organoids and to use drug screening on organoids as a model to find individualized medical treatment for glioblastoma patients.

Research focus

• Translational research
• Glioblastoma organoids
• Clonal evolution and resistance mechanisms in response to drug treatment
• Personalized medicine

WP relation: 1, 2 and 15.