Trainee Spotlight: Ingrid Lekk, PhD

Ingrid Lekk, PhD, grew up in Estonia, a tiny Northern European country with a population of 1.2 million. In school, she struggled to focus on one subject.

“I wanted to do everything,” she explains. “My final options were medicine, literature, molecular biology and classics. I picked molecular biology because it was the one subject I would not get a chance to try unless I studied it academically.”

At first, Dr. Lekk did research “purely to see what cool things nature had to offer.” But after completing her PhD in cell and developmental biology at University College London, she decided to direct her skills to a bigger cause: pediatric cancer research.

At CHLA, she works with James Amatruda, MD, PhD, to investigate the mechanisms of Ewing sarcoma metastasis. “I am studying patient-derived cancer cells in zebrafish embryos,” Dr. Lekk says. “The goal is to understand why some sarcoma cells have the ability to metastasize and how they choose where to go in the body.”

And while she is passionate about science, her love of literature remains. She reads and writes in her free time and published her first novel in Estonia a few years ago. Ingrid also enjoys outdoor activities. “Hiking and biking,” she adds, “are the best part of living in L.A.!”