The PHYM Department congratulates Esen Yonca Bassoy for her successful thesis defence
Congratulations to Esen Yonca Bassoy, supervised by Prof. Denis Martinvalet, who successfully defended her thesis and received her Doctoral degree with High Distinction this past Mon Nov 28th 2016.
Yonca has had a long-standing interest in cancer research, even before she began her studies at the CMU in 2011. Her studies here focused on identifying features of what makes glioblastoma cancer stemlike cells (GSC), an aggressive subtype of brain tumour cell that is resistant to chemotherapy, different from their more differentiated (GDC) counterparts, and how they can interact. Yonca’s observations, published recently in Plos One, revealed that the presence of GSC actually increases the killing of GDC by cytotoxic immune cells, suggesting that immunotherapies are potentially a more effective approach in fighting glioblastoma. Yonca also has a second first-author publication currently under revision investigating molecular differences between GSD and GSC.
In the future, Yonca hopes to continue her cancer research efforts in the context of translational medicine and we wish her the all the best for her bright future.
Posted by: P. Nunes-Hasler
2 Dec 2016