On November 8, Dr. Els Hermans successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “What does it take to build and manage a PDX platform” (promotors Prof. F. Amant and Prof. J.C. Marine) on Trace, the patient derived tumor xenograft platform of UZ-KU Leuven. Trace (https://www.uzleuven-kuleuven.be/lki/trace/) is today a well established facility that collaborates interdisciplinary with hospitals and research centers across Europe. Congratulations, Els! As Genomics Core we participated to the concretion of this project by providing sequencing services, the SNP ID strategy and the PDTX database.