Personalised pediatrics
Former ETH Excellence Scholar Arianna Arpagaus works in the Children’s Research Center at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich researching and developing targeted therapies for children with leukaemia.
“Today, around 80 percent of children with leukaemia can be cured with existing therapies,” says Arianna Arpagaus. “Our goal is to ensure that, one day, every child beats the disease.” The former Excellence Scholar works in the Children’s Research Center at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich, where she researches new treatment strategies for childhood leukaemia in a group led by Beat Bornhauser and Jean-Pierre Bourquin, who heads up the oncology department.
Personalised treatment
The research is patient-focused and highly personalised. Hospitals from across Europe send blood samples from childhood leukaemia patients to the team in Zurich. “These come from children whose disease hasn’t responded to conventional treatments,” Arpagaus explains. “We test them by exposing them to a broad panel of drugs.” Alongside medications that are already on the market, they also analyse the effectiveness of drugs that are yet to be licensed. Using specially developed leukaemia cell cultures, the team can screen up to 100 active substances per sample. “Roughly 20 of those may prove suit?able for treatment. The next steps are to discuss the findings and relay them to the treating clinicians,” she says. “Each new case is also compared with a large cohort of previously analysed samples. We’re building a database to track the progression of the disease in treated patients so that we can assess long-term effects more accurately.” Insights from the research centre enable hospitals to fine tune their treatment plans, optimise drug combinations or enrol their patients on a clinical trial of an investigational drug without marketing authorisation.
Sustainable by design
Over the gotthard
Biology and health research have fascinated Arpagaus ever since her school days. A native of Ticino, she attended baccalaureate school in Lugano as a springboard to study?ing in Zurich. “There aren’t many biology courses in Ticino, so I had to cross the Gotthard!” she laughs. Drawn by its patient-centred curriculum, she enrolled on ETH Zurich’s Bachelor’s degree programme in Health Sciences and Technol?ogy. Studying in German was a real test of her abilities. “The first months were tough, and it took time to find my feet in the language and in a new city,” she says. Battling homesickness and language barriers, she threw herself into studying and building a daily routine, ultimately thriving on the challenge. Today, Arpagaus speaks Italian, Romansh, French, English, German – and even Swiss German. The latter was helped by a Swiss Study Foundation scholarship, awarded for her outstanding Matura thesis. Its regu?lar events gave her plenty of contact with German-?speaking students and helped sharpen her language skills.
About
Arianna Arpagaus is a scientific assistant in the Children’s Research Center at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich. Originally from Ticino, she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences and Technology and a Master’s degree in Molecular Health Science, both from ETH Zurich. She was also admitted to the university’s prestigious Excellence Scholarship & Opportunity Programme (ESOP), run by the ETH Foundation.
She first heard of the ESOP at the end of her Bachelor’s degree. Together with her close friend Lorena Gregorio she applied for one of the coveted places, and both were thrilled to be accepted. “Knowing my parents no longer had to support me during my Master’s degree was a huge relief and a big motivation,” says Arpagaus. She is also convinced that the excellence scholarship gave her an edge in the job market.
Driven by curiosity
Ultimately, however, her Master’s degree in Molecular Health Science was nothing like she had imagined. Barely had the course begun when the coronavirus pandemic shut everything down; she completed her degree programme in the depths of lockdown, and her graduation ceremony was postponed for two years. With her Master’s degree under her belt, Arpagaus became a scientific assistant in Professor Isabelle Mansuy’s Laboratory of Neuroepigenetics, where she continued the work on stress-induced epigen?etic changes across multiple generations that had formed the basis of her Master’s thesis. “Epigenetics is a fascinating field. It covers all heritable changes in gene expression that leave the DNA sequence intact – essentially, how our environment and lifestyle choices affect our weight, health and countless other traits, and how these influences might be passed to future generations,” she says. Yet her urge to work closer with patients grew stronger, and a post at the Children’s Hospital proved to be the ideal chance to combine research with clinical practice: “Personalised medicine offers huge potential, especially in oncology. It’s really exciting to be directly involved in turning new ideas into real therapies.”
The great outdoors is where she goes to recharge. She likes to keep moving, and her biggest passion is orienteering, both on foot and on two wheels. Her father was a road-racing cyclist when her parents first met, and Arianna has even made the Swiss national squad in mountain bike orient?eering, competing at both the European and World Championships. These days, limited time means she enjoys the sport as a hobby with her partner, but she still travels to events all over the world with her club, C.O. Aget Lugano. She sees clear parallels between her favourite sport and research: “In orient?eering, it’s not the fastest person who wins, but the one who can navigate their way through complex terrain – and the same goes for solving problems in the lab,” she says. In winter, her focus switches to skiing. Arpagaus is a qualified ski instructor and used to teach in Nara, in the Blenio Valley. “It’s such a great feeling to be able to show kids how much fun you can have with sport,” she says. “At the same time, they come into contact with other cultures and discover Switzerland’s linguistic diversity.” Her own multilingualism is something she treasures, including the Romansh she learned as a child from her grandparents in Graubünden.
Arpagaus is open to where her career path takes her. “Research is my passion, and paedi?atric oncology is very close to my heart. I could imagine working even closer with patients in the future,” she says. Whether that leads her to settle in German-?speaking Switzerland, Ticino or abroad is less of an issue: “I’m happy with anything as long as it’s not boring. And the great thing about research is that there’s always something new to discover!”“In orienteering, it’s not the fastest person who wins, but the one who can navigate their way through complex terrain – and the same goes for solving problems in the lab.”