"My research is focused on finding new solutions and strategies to treat paediatric soft tissue sarcomas." Meet Dr Stella Man, a Higher Scientific Officer in the ICR's Sarcoma Molecular Pathology Team. Her work is supported by @alices_arc, a charity that aims to find a cure and develop kinder, more targeted treatments for rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) - an extremely aggressive type of sarcoma found in the soft tissues of children. For Sarcoma Awareness Month, Dr Man shares more about her work developing 3D models for rhabdomyosarcoma: "I develop models that can be used for drug testing or for improving our understanding of these cancers using the latest cutting-edge spatial transcriptomics technology. My work aims to ensure that we continue to push new scientific boundaries to improve patient outcomes. "I am currently preparing 3D models of alveolar RMS that better replicate the molecular similarity to tumour cells found in patients, including tumours from patients at relapse. We can then use these models to find new therapeutic targets and potentially develop new treatments for patients with this disease. "A key feature of alveolar RMS is the presence of the fusion proteins, PAX3/7-FOXO1 that drive the disease. We are artificially introducing the PAX3-FOXO1 fusion gene into cells to create cells that can switch the fusion protein on and off which we will molecularly characterise and assess changes in cell appearance. "A member of our team has been generating cell lines of RMS that are now resistant to the standard chemotherapy drugs. These provide a useful tool for finding new ways to overcome the difficulty of treatment-resistant patients in the clinic." #SarcomaAwarenessMonth #SarcomaAwareness #Sarcoma #SarcomaResearch #SarcomaCancer #SarcomaCancerResearch #WomenInScience #WomenInSTEM #WomenInResearch #STEMinist #ChildhoodCancerAwareness #ChildhoodCancer #ChildhoodCancerResearch #Rhabdomyosarcoma