Hannah Kunstek
PhD candidate at Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology, Utrecht
Destination: Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Travel period: multiple visits throughout the 2025 and 2026
Date: 16/3/2026

About me
I am a PhD student funded by the Marie-Sklodowska-Currie Actions (MSCA), working in the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht. My research focuses on identifying biomarkers that can help us better understand and monitor the immune system of children undergoing stem cell transplantation. My goal is to implement these biomarkers into clinical practice and make more informed treatment decisions. I am passionate about bridging science and care, and I am driven by the impact my research could have on patients’ wellbeing and quality of life.

About the project
Children with malignancies might need to undergo stem cell transplantation (SCT), in which their immune system is replaced by that of a donor. While this treatment can be life-saving, it also comes with risks. After SCT, patients and their immune system take time to recover. In the meantime, they are at risk of possibly life-threatening complications, one of which is Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). GvHD is a complication that could potentially be treated with corticosteroids, such as prednisolone. However, some children do not respond to this first-line treatment, and are at increased risk of poor outcomes and mortality.
The main objective of my project is to to better understand why some patients respond to treatment and others do not. By creating detailed immune profiles of these two groups, we hope to identify key differences at the cellular level. This may reveal biological pathways that drive treatment resistance and ultimately help improve therapy.

Visit to Prague
Thanks to the support of the René Vogels Foundation, I was able to visit the research group of Prof. Dr. Tomas Kalina at Charles University in Prague (Childhood Leukemia Investigation Prague (CLIP) laboratory). During my stay, I learned, optimized and applied an advanced laboratory technique: mass cytometry. Mass cytometry or CyTOF is a technique used in protein investigations, in which we label proteins with rare heavy metals and detect their time-of-flight. I used this technique to measure over 40 surface and intracellular proteins of interest, analyze cell signaling pathways and characterize cell activation states.

Typically I would spend the days in the laboratory – preparing and measuring samples on the CyTOF machine. This hands-on experience was essential to generate the high-dimensional data needed for my project, and allows me to set up the technique in Utrecht. However, I also got to meet fellow researchers, connect with fellow PhD students, and experience a different research environment in the Czech Republic. In my free time, I explored and enjoyed the beautiful city of a hundred spires – Prague.

Figure 1: Visual summary of my research stay in Prague

Figure 2: Interview about my research stay for broad audience
https://www.prinsesmaximacentrum.nl/en/news/international-exchanges-in-the-butterfly-program

Conclusion
This in-depth profiling project is an important step toward the optimization of current immune-monitoring of our patients. We hope that our insights could lead to optimization of the current GvHD treatment protocol, and ultimately lower GvHD-related mortality in children.

I would like to thank and acknowledge the René Vogels Foundation’s financial support for my visits to Prague. Their contribution supported not only my travel, but also the knowledge transfer and collaboration establishment between our two research groups.