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A warm welcome to Leandro Ladvanszky, a new PhD in the Department of Molecular Medicine & Pathology.

Leandro will work on the project “Cells stress in haematopoietic cells: A novel mechanism in leukaemia development”. He is supervised by Dr Maggie Kalev, Dr Ally Jung Un Choi, and Dr Dean Singleton.

Leandro is a medical laboratory scientist from the Cellular Therapy section at the New Zealand Blood Service Centre in Epsom. He graduated from Biomedicine in Brazil, later completed post-graduate studies and gained a Master’s degree at the University of Auckland.

Leandro will use a novel 3D culture model to study cell stress responses in human megakaryocytes cultured from stem cells isolated from residual apheresis filters of blood donors and from the bone marrow of patients with megakaryocytic cancers. His study is a pioneering effort to comprehensively investigate the impact of cell stress on megakaryocytes. Given the current lack of data in this field, his project will generate substantial insights that may help modulate the abnormal cell stress response in chronic megakaryocytic cancers and prevent disease progression to acute leukaemia.