I completed my PhD in the laboratory of Prof. Klaus Pantel at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany), where I worked on the ERC-funded DISSECT project focused on liquid biopsy approaches in urological cancers. Following my doctoral training, I was awarded two competitive postdoctoral fellowships from the Umberto Veronesi Foundation and the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC), which enabled me to continue my research at the IFOM-FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy.

At IFOM, I was part of the research program “Spatiotemporal Organization of the Nucleus”, directed by Prof. Paolo Maiuri, where I investigated nuclear polarity and its role in cellular organization and function.

Currently, at Gdańsk Medical University (GUMed), I lead the Laboratory of Nuclear Mechano-Oncology, supported by NCN SONATA, NCN OPUS, and FIRST TEAM FENG grants. I have also received an EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant to establish international collaboration at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB, Trieste, Italy) with Prof. Giannino Del Sal, investigating mechanical cues that drive tumor progression.

My research explores how physical and mechanical forces acting on the cell nucleus influence cancer development and progression, with a strong emphasis on advanced microscopy techniques. In particular, I aim to understand how cancer cells respond to stress during disease progression and how these adaptive responses contribute to invasion, metastasis, and resistance to therapy. My work integrates fundamental cell biology with translational oncology, with the long-term goal of identifying new mechanisms and potential biomarkers relevant to cancer diagnosis and treatment.

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Contact:
paulina.nastaly@gumed.edu.pl