‘Working together’ with Sabine Strehl
In today’s biomedical research, interdisciplinary collaboration is essential. While leukemia is the most common childhood cancer, certain subtypes are extremely rare necessitating international studies for comprehensive data collection to understand their pathogenesis and prognostic relevance. Sabine Strehl’s research focuses on unraveling the genetic mechanisms behind leukemia development, emphasizing the importance of robust research data and to collaborate with experts from different disciplines to achieve success.
Sabine Strehl has been at St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute since its foundation and is the Principal Investigator of the Genetics of Leukemia Group. Together with her team, she aims to decipher the genetic mechanisms responsible for the development and progression of leukemia. To this end, her research group is deeply engaged in the molecular characterization of leukemia to gain a better understanding of the disease with the ultimate goal to develop new, targeted therapies. The exchange with other scientists is central to this effort: only through close collaboration with bioinformaticians, data scientists and oncologists can complex data sets be generated and analyzed, which is essential for addressing key questions of leukemia genetics.
Sabine Strehl advises young researchers to present their work at national and international conferences to get expert feedback. At St. Anna CCRI, networking opportunities abound through internal seminars, lectures by invited speakers, and social events, all of which lay the ground for scientific cooperation.
Science Communication Team: To what extent do interdisciplinary collaboration and sharing knowledge play a role in your research?
Sabine Strehl: “Walking in each other’s shoes” we, the experimental researchers, work side-by-side with bioinformaticians to better understand the pathogenesis and progression of leukemia. Bringing together our different backgrounds and expertise across disciplines opens up new perspectives to address challenging biomedical questions.
Science Communication Team: To what extent has the importance of collaboration changed due to/because of technological progress?
Sabine Strehl: The growing use of next-generation sequencing approaches to tackle unsolved biological questions along with the complexity of the resulting data demand strong teamwork with data scientists. From the earliest stages of project development, we work closely with bioinformaticians and computer scientists to formulate questions and plan the experimental designs. This mode of collaboration is key for generating meaningful functional genomics datasets and integrative data analysis.
Science Communication Team: Which specific projects or research topics connect you and your research group with other groups within St. Anna CCRI?
Sabine Strehl: We are currently modeling fusion protein-driven acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) by combining CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing with in vitro differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells toward hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. To understand the trajectories of leukemia development, we are applying functional genomics assays, including single-cell RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq and the Developmental Cancer Genomics team of Florian Halbritter conducts the integrative bioinformatics analyses.
Together with the Immunological Diagnostics group of Michael N. Dworzak, by predicting cell surface antigen expression via whole transcriptome expression profiling, we aim to refine the correlation between underlying genetic alterations and the characteristic immunophenotypic features of the leukemic blast cells determined by flow cytometry. This endeavor not only aims to guide genetic analysis but also to improve disease classification and to identify markers for sensitive and robust leukemia detection to monitor measurable residual disease, a mainstay of risk stratification, as well as targets for immunotherapy.
Science Communication Team: What do you appreciate about working with the other groups?
Sabine Strehl: Joint brainstorming and bouncing ideas are both creative and fun. The beauty of working with other groups lies in interacting with people from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and to look at scientific questions from different angles, which broadens your horizon and increases the chances of success.
Science Communication Team: What advice do you have for young researchers who are just starting to build up a network? Are there opportunities to network at St. Anna CCRI?
Sabine Strehl: Participating in national and international meetings early in your career offers a valuable opportunity to present your work and receive feedback from experts in the field, and to network with peers in the scientific community. At St. Anna CCRI, attending internal seminars and lectures by invited speakers is key for learning about scientific questions and the approaches different research groups take to address them. While you don’t need to be best friends with everyone, knowing your colleagues personally facilitates communication, hence, attending social events and going out for dinner or a drink with colleagues once in a while will also foster scientific collaborations.
Science Communication Team: How would you rate the importance of international cooperation for the success of your research group?
Sabine Strehl: Although leukemia is the most common childhood malignancy, it is still a rare disease and international collaborative research projects often yield insights beyond what any single team could achieve alone, such as addressing the prognostic relevance of rare leukemia subtypes to refine risk stratification and optimize therapy. Cooperation and teamwork across organizational and cultural boundaries force you to look beyond your own nose and expand the potential for discovery and success.