One year of PredictAYA – Reflections from the Innsbruck Team

July 22, 2026

Written by Marja Anne Schröder, Research Associate at the Medical University of Innsbruck

The PredictAYA project has now been running for one year, and I feel very fortunate to be part of the Innsbruck team together with PD Dr. med. Bettina Böttcher, MA, the local project lead, and my colleague Rick Saueressig.

Over the past year, one of the most valuable parts of my work has been meeting patients during their follow-up visits. These conversations have shown me that PredictAYA is about much more than collecting data. Behind every AMH value, semen analysis, and questionnaire is a person with their own story, their own experiences, and their own hopes for the future.

Many of the patients we meet are still very young. Seeing how cancer and its treatment can affect people at such an early stage of life has made the importance of this project very real to me. Being able to accompany patients during their follow-up visits while learning from their experiences has been meaningful both professionally and personally.

As we move into the next phase of the project, I am looking forward to seeing the work of the past year come to life. With data collection beginning in Innsbruck, we hope to gain new insights that will help improve fertility prediction and personalized counselling for adolescent and young adult cancer survivors.

One of the things I find most interesting about PredictAYA is that it brings together 18 partners from 10 European countries. This collaboration gives us the opportunity to learn from one another and to better understand how quality of life, treatment outcomes, and long-term survivorship may differ between countries. These comparisons may not only deepen our understanding of patients’ needs but also generate valuable insights into how healthcare systems and societal factors shape survivorship and reproductive health after cancer.

For me, PredictAYA is a project where research and patient care go hand in hand. I am grateful to be part of an international collaboration that has the potential to improve care, counselling, and quality of life for future generations of young cancer survivors. I look forward to everything we will learn and achieve together in the years ahead.

Marja Anne Schröder is a Research Associate at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria. From October 2026, she will also practice as a Medical Doctor next to working on the PredictAYA project.