On Plan C for life, or the synergy between stem cell biology and masterful cello playing Dr Agata Kurzyk conducts research at the Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institue of Oncology, collaborates scientifically with foreign centres and is a populariser of science, but her great passion is also music. She plays the cello and composes, including pieces based on... cell division. Combining her passions has not only allowed her to achieve great results and awards for her scientific activities; dr Kurzyk is also a European champion and finalist in the world championships in looping. She also creates music for films and TV shows. However, when she enters the laboratory, her compositions take on a completely different shape. Here, she is primarily involved in research into drug resistance, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which is the sixth most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide. There are many treatment options for HCC, including curative resection, liver transplantation, radiofrequency ablation, transarterial chemoembolization, radioembolization, and systemic targeted agents such as sorafenib. Quite often, patients treated with sorafenib develop acquired resistance, a major obstacle to the effective pharmacological treatment of cancer. Therefore, drug resistance research makes an important contribution to identifying new molecular targets and optimizing cancer therapy. These topics have been of particular interest to Dr. Agata Kurzyk who joined 2021 professor Antonio Mazzocca’s lab at the Interdisciplinary Department of Medicine, University of Bari School of Medicine as a research fellow. Here, Dr. Kurzyk joined the research program on different aspects of liver cancer, including the involvement of the Autotaxin/Lysophosphatidic acid (ATX/LPA) signaling axis in promoting HCC progression and the characterization of a class of LPA receptor 6 (LPAR6) antagonists as potential anti-hepatic cancer therapeutics. With Dr. Davide Gnocchi, a member of the Prof. Mazzocca's team, Dr.. Kurzyk focused on defining the role of the LPAR6 receptor in mediating sorafenib resistance. The results showed that LPAR6 sustains sorafenib resistance and that Xanthenyl acetic acid (XAA), an LPAR6 selective inhibitor (developed and characterized by Prof. Mazzocca's team) can effectively overcome such resistance. The results of this collaboration have been the subject of a scientific article, which is currently under consideration for publication.