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Golden Spatula 2016

Winner of the Golden Spatula 2016

Elodie Stoetman

“Clonal evolution and gene expression profiles in relapsed acute myeloid leukemia” Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences

This year, the Golden Spatula jury nominated Elodie Stoetman's thesis, written as part of her bachelor's degree program at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Engineering & Applied Science, for the Golden Spatula award.

She completed her internship at Erasmus University Medical Center, in the Hematology department.

Elodie conducted research into therapy resistance in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). A major problem is that in a large number of patients, the disease returns after they initially responded positively to the therapy offered.

Elodie investigated whether specific genetic abnormalities could be found in this group of patients that could predict the recurrence of AML. What is remarkable is that during this research, Elodie became proficient in bioinformatics, which was a completely new subject for her. She applied a range of bioinformatics software and immersed herself in R programming for the statistical analysis of her data. In addition, she validated the results obtained through experiments in the lab, which means that she became proficient in two fields in a short period of time.

Her report is very well written; she has articulated her hypothesis particularly well and presented her results clearly. What was particularly striking for a report at the higher professional education level was the depth of her discussion. She compares her results very clearly and critically with published results from other researchers in this field. She has also made very good proposals for follow-up research.

Her supervisors are also very impressed with how much Elodie has learned in an internship of only 20 weeks. They believe that she worked very efficiently and was able to quickly master and apply new techniques. They also believe that Elodie's report far exceeds the bachelor's level.

Based on the above facts, the selection committee concluded that Elodie is an excellent candidate for the Golden Spatula award.

The other two prizes were awarded to:

Marjolein Bakker - Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences
The Effect of STAP1 on cell signaling and cell survival in precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Yoeri Janssen - Arnhem and Nijmegen University of Applied Sciences
Photochemistry in flow