Inside Cancer Careers

Inside Cancer Careers explores and illuminates the exciting world of cancer research training using a human-interest angle.

The Future of AI and Cancer Research 03/20/2025

The Future of Clinical Trials: Decentralized and Patient-Centric 03/06/2025

The Future of Clinical Trials: Decentralized and Patient-Centric In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, Dr. Shaalan Beg, Senior Advisor for Clinical Research at the NCI and Principal Investigator at Science 37, discusses the challenges and opportunities in the field of clinical trials. The conversation centers on the increasing number of potential cancer interventions and the need for efficient clinical trial infrastructure to test these interventions. Dr. Beg emphasizes the importance of matching patients to appropriate clinical trials and ensuring that the patient population in a trial is representative of the broader population with that specific disease. Dr. Beg shares his career path and share advice for those interested in a similar career. SHOW NOTES: Shaalan Beg, M.D., M.B.A.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaalanbeg/ Science 37: https://www.science37.com/science-37r-adds-acclaimed-researcher-and-oncologist-dr-shaalan-beg-bolster-therapeutic-depth Virtual Clinical Trials Office: https://dctd.cancer.gov/MajorInitiatives/virtual_clinical_trials_office_pilot_program.htm NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD): https://dctd.cancer.gov/ AD: Worta McCaskill-Stevens Career Development Award for Community Oncology and Prevention Research (K12): https://www.cancer.gov/grants-training/training/funding/k12-mccaskill-stevens Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCan): https://pancan.org/ ASCO Leadership Development Program: https://www.asco.org/career-development/leadership-programs/leadership-development-program American Society for Clinical Oncology: https://www.asco.org/ YOUR TURN RECOMMENDATIONS: Empire (podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/ee/podcast/empire/id1639561921 300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/300-arguments CENTER FOR CANCER TRAINING (CCT) LEARN MORE FROM THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE By Phone: () U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/35515275

Revolutionizing Cancer Research: Navigating the AI Landscape 02/20/2025

Revolutionizing Cancer Research: Navigating the AI Landscape In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, we explore the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and cancer research. Dr. Juli Klemm and Dr. Sean Hanlon from the NCI's Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives discuss various applications of AI in cancer research, including image analysis, clinical informatics, and basic cancer biology. They emphasize the importance of data sharing, model evaluation, and ensuring robust model performance. The conversation also touches upon the implications of AI in healthcare and the need for collaboration across government agencies and external organizations. Additionally, Drs. Klemm and Hanlon share their career paths and provide advice for early-career scientists interested in pursuing AI in cancer research. The episode concludes with recommendations for books and podcasts that the guests have found inspiring. SHOW NOTES Juli Klemm, Ph.D.: https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/organization/cssi/about/contact/juli-klemm Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR): https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/organization/cssi/research/itcr Sean Hanlon, Ph.D.: https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/organization/cssi/about/contact/sean-hanlon NCI Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives: https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/organization/cssi 4D Nucleome (4DN) Program: https://commonfund.nih.gov/4DNucleome Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN): https://humantumoratlas.org/ Cancer AI Conversations: https://events.cancer.gov/nci/cancer-ai-conversations NCI Artificial Intelligence Working Group (email): [email protected] AD: NanCI -Connecting Scientists mobile application: https://www.cancer.gov/grants-training/training/nanci-app Incyte Genomics: https://incyte.com/ AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship: http://www.stpf-aaas.org/ NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT): https://datascience.cancer.gov/ NCI Junior Investigator Annual Meeting: https://events.cancer.gov/dcb/ji-meeting HTAN Data Jamboree: https://frederick.cancer.gov/events/htan-data-jamboree-2024 YOUR TURN RECOMMENDATIONS The Demon Under the Microscope by Thomas Hager: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/73465/the-demon-under-the-microscope-by-thomas-hager/ The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/73464/the-alchemy-of-air-by-thomas-hager-author-of-the-demon-under-the-microscope/ 99% Invisible hosted by Roman Mars (podcast): https://99percentinvisible.org/ Mortality by Christopher Hitchens: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/christopher-hitchens/mortality/9781455502752/ CENTER FOR CANCER TRAINING (CCT) LEARN MORE FROM THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE By Phone: () U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/35285075

From Lab to Clinic: The Power of Mentorship in Cancer Research 01/16/2025

NCI Tackles Early Onset Cancer 01/02/2025

ColoTech: Engineering Students Tackle Early Colon Cancer Detection 12/19/2024

BD-STEP: A NCI & VA Training Program for Data Scientists 12/05/2024

International Cancer Control: A Global Call to Action 11/21/2024

Cancer Around the World: A Global Health Challenge 11/07/2024

iCURE: A Path to Cancer Research 10/17/2024

Harnessing the Power of Data Science in Cancer Research 10/03/2024

The Editors' Role: Behind the Scenes at Cancer Cell 09/19/2024

Empowering the Next Generation of Women Scientists: The Sallie Rosen Kaplan Fellowship Program - Part 2 09/05/2024

Empowering the Next Generation of Women Scientists: The Sallie Rosen Kaplan Fellowship Program - Part 1 08/15/2024

Staff Scientists: The Swiss Army Knife of NCI 08/01/2024

Staff Scientists: The Swiss Army Knife of NCI In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, we have Dr. Swati Choksi, a Staff Scientist at NCI Center for Cancer Research, and Dr. Christophe Marchand, Deputy Associate Director in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis and former Staff Scientist, sharing insights about their roles in cancer research. They talk about the advantages and responsibilities of being a staff scientist, such as mentoring and training early career researchers and conducting their own experiments. They emphasize the importance of staff scientists in fostering collaborations within and outside the research team. Additionally, they delve into the transferability of skills, potential career paths for staff scientists, and more. SHOW NOTES Swati S. Choski, Ph.D.: https://ccr.cancer.gov/staff-directory/swati-s-choksi Center for Cancer Research: https://ccr.cancer.gov/ Christophe Marchand, Ph.D.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophemarchand/ Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis: https://dtp.cancer.gov/organization/oad/default.htm NCI Intramural Research Program: https://irp.nih.gov/about-us/our-programs/nci NIH Staff Scientists & Staff Clinicians: https://oir.nih.gov/sourcebook/personnel/ipds-appointment-mechanisms/staff-scientist NCI Staff Scientists and Staff Clinicians Career Enrichment Program (SCEP): https://www.cancer.gov/grants-training/training/idwb/career-enrichment-program CCR Staff Scientist & Staff Clinician Organization: https://ccrod.cancer.gov/confluence/display/CCRSSSCArchive/By-Laws NIH Assembly of Scientists: https://oir.nih.gov/sourcebook/committees-advisory-ddir/assembly-scientists-aos AD—NanCI–Connecting Scientists mobile application: https://www.cancer.gov/grants-training/training/nanci-app Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/ And The Band Played On: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106273/ Center for Research Strategy: https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/organization/crs YOUR TURN RECOMMENDATIONS Life is Beautiful: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/ The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: https://www.amazon.com/God-Small-Things-Novel/dp/0812979656 Leadership Freak: https://leadershipfreak.blog/ Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick: https://www.amazon.com/Co-Intelligence-Living-Working-Ethan-Mollick/dp/059371671X CENTER FOR CANCER TRAINING (CCT) LEARN MORE FROM THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE By Phone: 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/32336347

AI and Immunotherapy: A Breakthrough in Cancer Treatment 07/18/2024

Curiosity + Strategy = Progress [Special Episode] 07/04/2024

Making an Impact Through Collaboration and Community Engagement 06/20/2024

Planning for the Nation: The President's Cancer Panel 06/06/2024

Cultural Transitions: Building a Career in American Science 05/16/2024

Cultural Transitions: Building a Career in American Science In this episode, we hear from Dr. Yamini Dalal, Senior Investigator and Senior Advisor for Faculty Development, and Dr. Sweta Sikder, Postdoctoral Fellow in NCI Center for Cancer Research. They discuss their experiences of moving to the US for their scientific careers, including the challenges they faced and the opportunities and benefits of working in the US. They also share their paths to biology, passion for their research, and much more! Show Notes Ad: Your Turn Recommendations: (book) (book) (Netflix series) (movie) (book) & (Netflix series) (book)  TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI's Center for Cancer Training. May is Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and is dedicated to celebrating the contributions members of these communities make to the United States. One of the things I love about science is that it is an international enterprise, bringing people from all over the world together to focus on shared goals like ending cancer as we know it. As a result, many scientists leave their homes and live and work in another country. Today, we're talking to two scientists originally from India who have made the NCI's Intramural Research Program their scientific home. And we'll be talking to them about what it was like to come to the US to pursue their science and how it's going and their careers. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn. So it's a pleasure to welcome Dr. Yamini Dalal, senior investigator in the Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression in NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. Welcome. Yamini Dalal Thank you all of you. Oliver Bogler Welcome also to Dr. Sweta Sikder. She is a visiting postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Yamini's research group. Welcome. Sweta Sikder Thank you. Oliver Bogler So you both came to America during your early careers. Yamini, you came to pursue graduate work at Purdue and Sweta, you came for your postdoc at the NCI. We'll talk about your careers later, but I wanted to start by asking you what it was like to move to another country for your science. Yamini Dalal All right. Well, thank you, Oliver, for hosting us on this fantastic show. I've listened to the blogs in the past and I really find it a great way to disseminate what we're doing here at the NCI and share our perspectives. I came to the US when I was, I think, 22 or 23 and I left India on Independence Day, which was sort of a bittersweet feeling. And I moved to the Midwest to pursue graduate school. And the first thing that was the biggest challenge for me was the weather because I grew up in Bombay, which is subtropical, and it's never cold. And the very first thing I discovered about the Midwest is that it gets really, really, really cold in the winter. And then in a way, I suppose that spurred my scientific studies because I didn't want to leave Lily Hall, which is nice and warm all winter round. Sweta? Sweta Sikder Yes, so for me, it was a very unique kind of an experience. I came to US for the first time to join Yamini’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow. And incidentally, I landed or my flight landed exactly the day before the government shut down. That is in 2020, where the whole world shut down to say. Yamini Dalal On the Ides of March very appropriately. Sweta Sikder I just had a day to come to NIH to get registered here. And then we were all like doing the pandemic shutdown and at home. So when I was pursuing my career, there was always this thing that you should, if you are in science, you should always have that US exposure of science. But for me, when I landed finally in the US, it was a very, it was a very different kind of experience. Things started changing slowly. But what I faced for a long time is like being in a society which is so open, but where you cannot really access people because of the pandemic shutdown. So now I'm more glad that we have like a very vibrant campus. We meet lots of people and, but it was all not accessible when I came to US. Oliver Bogler So making a connection with people that may be at the same career stage as you are, and maybe who have some shared background, maybe also coming from the country you were coming from, is that an important element? And obviously, the pandemic made that super hard, right? Sweta Sikder Yes, and also when I came to US, I had this open kind of a, I wanted to have an open mind and wanted to get an exposure of other culture, the other society as well. Obviously, you want people coming from the same country like me from India, you want to connect with them and then share your things, but I wanted to have a different kind of an experience. I wanted to mix, see other people, talk to them, have kind of a unique experience, which was kind of difficult. We all met through Zooms and online meetings. And even when we used to see people, when I used to go around for a walk or something, I used to see people walking, but we all maintained that social distancing thing. And it was super, super difficult at that point of time, but now looking back, I feel that it kind of mentored me that the pandemic time when we were all shut down, it also helped me in my inner and my personal growth as well. Yamini Dalal I think there's a resilience, right, that we had to reach into during the pandemic. And I think you did a really great job reaching inside yourself to survive those first six months completely alone. Sweta Sikder Yes, and also at this point, I would like to mention this, that this lab was super helpful, like all of my lab colleagues, because I haven't met them ever. Like it was the first time meeting them, but they were very, very helpful reaching out because when I came for the first time, I had to figure out like many logistic things, right? Like doing your social security number, having a bank account, like all those minute things. But I'm grateful in the sense that I got very supportive colleagues, my mentor, Yamini here. And they were always like a text away to help me at any time despite the pandemic. Oliver Bogler You mentioned also that I guess the United States is kind of a draw for scientists from across the world. And that's certainly been true over the last many decades. Um, tell me more about that. What, what specifically were you both, uh, hoping to accomplish by moving to the United States? Yamini Dalal Yeah, I think, you know, my feeling, Oliver, was when I was growing up in Bombay, I grew up in a very specific, very privileged class of people that all had similar exposures. And it really comes down to, I had no exposure to people that were outside of that little bubble. And we all went to really great schools. Our parents were professionals with advanced degrees. You know, we got exposed to like the best science, the best art, but it was all in this bubble of not knowing really even anything about India when I was growing up. I felt like I didn't know what it meant to be really Indian. I knew what it meant to be a Bombayite, in South Bombay, which is sort of like Manhattan, but I didn't know what it really meant to be from a different social class or from a different culture from what I had been exposed to. The beautiful thing about going to Purdue, especially, was that it's an extremely international school. I still have friends I've made there from all over the world. They're faculty now in New Zealand and Australia and England and Europe. And I had friends from Gary, Indiana and Montana. Places I had never heard of, maybe I read about them in books. And because Peru had a great ecology department, many of my friends were actually people in their 30s who were coming back to grad school after having worked for a decade in really low paying jobs, principally because they had undergraduate debt, a concept to which I had never been exposed. Because in India, you don't have undergraduate debt. You don't have no debt at all. Indians don't usually, they don't embrace the concept of debt because schooling is generally much, much more affordable there, even the best schools. The biggest shock to me was to find out most of my friends had thousands of dollars in debt. And as a consequence, they had to wait almost a decade to come back to grad school, which means they took it very, very seriously. It was very different for someone like me who'd just been on this kind of trajectory this whole time. So I got exposed to the poverty, the idea that poverty can really alter your scientific trajectory very significantly and that you've got to be given an opportunity. And this is where Purdue really excelled because they had RA ships, research assistantships and TA ships that funded almost everybody. Nobody really had to pay for grad school. Of course you had to work really hard. I spent 20 hours a week as a TA. I thought that experience was absolutely transformative. I'd never taught before in a formal setting. To teach 20 hours a week to people from the Midwest, because most of the undergraduates were actually from the Midwest, I had to slow down my speech by at least tenfold, which actually taught me the importance of making jokes when you teach to just sort of get a break, a lull in the discourse, because people are really trying, struggling to keep up with you. And you're operating at this level of information and they're here and you've got to find a way to make that accessible. I found the Purdue teaching experience changed the way that I thought of science as an enterprise in which you have to bring somebody along because they're going to have better ideas than you. And because the teachers at Purdue, one of whom just passed away, Joann Otto, were brilliant, I learned a lot from these educators. They'd spend their whole lives teaching in addition to doing science, which is again a concept I hadn't been exposed to before. These experiences with teaching in a national setting, learning how to make things accessible rather than holding the information in for yourself, I think it changed the way that I perceive my job as a scientist. Sweta Sikder Yes, for me, it was like a slightly different. I came at a much after finishing my grad school. So I initially always wanted to do my PhD from abroad. Somehow it did not work out at that time. I just sat for an exam, which is like super competitive in India, which is which you need to, to get through to grad school. And when I went there, I had no expectation that I will qualify in the first round because usually like 95 % of people don't get through that. So eventually grad school happened in India, but I always had this thing of going especially to US because I used to hear a lot of interview talks from scientists, US scientists, Nobel laureates. And some used to visit India and I used to interact with them a lot. So all these things made me think that my full growth as a scientist or as a person will not be complete unless I go to US. I mean, it was kind of a childish dream which I had during my bachelor's that my career path will not be complete until I reach US. But coming here, I think it's nothing like that. You grow constantly. You grow all the time. Wherever you are, it doesn't matter. The passion of science should drive you in your career. But yes, in science, I would say that the way we do science here, the way we pursue a question, how to solve it and the curiosity driven science. Like you're curious about a simple thing and you ask that question and you try to find out that answer. So that actually drew me to US. But I would also mention that the training which I got in India was very good. We had like hands -on training, very good course in my bachelor's, master's, and then when I went to grad school. And also like all the experiments, technical skills, I kind of enjoyed that part of my career as well. Oliver Bogler So the United States, the science here has the reputation of being like you just said, Sweta a curiosity driven and kind of an idea meritocracy in the sense that the best ideas prevail. And so that's its reputation. Was that your experiences when you both came here? Yamini Dalal Yeah, absolutely for me. My thesis advisor, Arnie Stein and I had this ongoing conversation for like five years where we constantly challenge each other with hypotheses and ideas. And he never made it feel like, you know, he's one of the people that started the chromatin field. He trained at the NIH actually, many years ago with Bob Simpson. He never made me feel like I was lesser than him. The only difference between was experience. He had more experience and he was willing to share it. But he was always excited to hear my ideas. And, you know, we had a little hypothesis book with like thousands and thousands of ideas that we wrote over five years. Our relationship really defined my science because he made me realize just how much fun American science can be because there's this equal footing in the empire of the mind. And when I was coming from India, I felt like back then, now it's not true, but back then India was still very hierarchical in its science. You had the chair, you had the professor, they knew more, you had to be very very respectful, which I think is still important. I think it's important to be respectful. But here I feel like there was an emphasis on challenging ideas and challenging dogma. And that made it very creative, but it also made it really fun. The fun aspect of science was something I think I truly embraced after coming to Purdue. And also the exposure to people doing just all kinds of science. People working on the smallest microplankton, people working at Purdue on space. I used to go to lectures on physics, gravitational stuff, because Arnie used to be a physicist, so he'd always encouraged me to learn about physics. I had friends working on all kinds of problems, you know, the sexual development of ferns, first species ever to have gametophytes. So these friends really defined my approach to science, which is fun and curiosity driven. And I think that is still the strength of the United States. But other countries have now embraced that principle. And I think it's made science really very strong in India, in Germany and other countries where many of our people who were trained here went back home and are now chairs of departments and very senior in their leadership. Sweta Sikder Yes, I also agree to some of Yamini's points. When I joined this lab, actually, I wanted to work in aging, but I wanted to work in epigenetics, chromatin, and that's how I met Yamini. Actually, I met Yamini through another professor who is another chromatin biologist. So he actually recommended me to Yamini. And we had this long conversations in how to address a simple question of biology, like how do our chromosomes behave when we age? And although we went through a lot of challenges because aging itself is kind of challenging in terms of how you ask the question, what kind of tools you have, what kind of system you want to look into, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this journey for the last three to four years. We go back and forth with the simple question and then find out ways how to defy our hypothesis and then come up with results which is in lieu with our hypothesis. So this is kind of fun. Also the exposure of the branch as well, like other scientists, other colleagues, other postdocs. I like this environment of NIH especially, especially of the branch where we can just walk around, talk to other fellow postdocs who are doing like cool microscopy techniques, single resolution microscopy, high throughput imaging, and just have a conversation over a cup of coffee. And everyone is like very eager to help you, give you insights, which I think should be a more in the system in India, especially I would say, because we need more of a congenial environment where we can boost each other's science. And that, I think, helps scientists overall. Oliver Bogler So at the heart of the science that you're describing, under ideal circumstances, is a, as you said, an open discourse and a sort of slightly rough and tumble exchange of ideas and competing the ideas are competing. To create that atmosphere in a research team, particularly one that has members coming from many different cultures, is a challenge. It's not easy. I mean, we think of ourselves as scientists as sort of being above culture, but it's not true. We're cultural beings like every human. Yamini, as you manage your research team and lead your research team, how do you accomplish that? Yamini Dalal You know, as I said, Oliver, I had two fantastic mentors, Arnie Stein at Purdue and Steve Henikoff at the Hutch. The thing that unified both Steve and Arnie was a fundamental, absolute love for science. And that love for science transcended rank. It transcended funding. It transcended who you were, the privileges you came with. You could argue with Steve or Arnie any day about a hypothesis and they didn't care. You know, it would get loud, it would get fractious. But it was all in this intellectual sphere of, hey, let's figure this out. This is going to be fun. I tried to bring that level of fun and intensity to my lab. I'm naturally very intense. I tried to lower my intensity. I think that was maybe the big thing I had to learn was how to titrate myself, my own personality, so that I wasn't overwhelming people in the lab. I have not really succeeded, I think, but I try. So part of that was learning that it didn't matter who the smartest person in the room was because sometimes the best ideas did not come from who thought they were smartest. Intuition has a very, very big role in science and some of the best ideas we've had in the lab have just intuitively arisen in lab meeting. When we're just throwing an idea back and forth, I'll give you one example. Song Fu was our first summer intern. He's a resident physician at Yale. And when he joined my lab from the University of Maryland, he came for three summers in a row and then stayed as a post-bac. And he got really intrigued by this finding that Rajbir Gill had made, who was my first lab biologist, that all the extra centromeric protein that was being expressed in cancer cells was going outside centromeres. And Song said, hey, maybe it's making these fragile sites because it's making the DNA more open. And, you know, we thought about that idea, but we never formalized it. And he got so excited by his own idea, he tested it and that became a thing. It became a field. What he discovered became a field. And now, you know, many, many people have worked on it since one of the best people in my field, Genevieve Almouzni, co-discovered it at the same time as we did. And those papers came out like a few months apart. I think that is the power of allowing people to... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/31293922

Inspiring Creativity through Night Science 05/02/2024

Inspiring Creativity through Night Science In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, Dr. Oliver Bogler interviews two guests, Dr. Itai Yanai, who is a Professor at NYU School of Medicine, and Dr. Martin Lercher, who is a Professor at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. They are also co-founders of Night Science, which is the creative aspect of scientific research. They discuss the importance of scientific creativity and explore why it is often overlooked in scientific training and how it can be nurtured. Drs. Yanai and Lercher then discuss their early inspirations for pursuing science, their career paths, and the importance of interdisciplinary thinking. Show Notes (book) Ad:   Your Turn Recommendations:  TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI Center for Cancer Training. Today, we're talking about scientific creativity, an often overlooked but vital element in a successful research career and how you can take practical steps to nurture it, evoke it and connect with others around it. I'm going to admit I'm really excited about today's conversation. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to Take Your Turrn. So it's my pleasure to welcome two very special guests, Dr. Itai Yanai, professor at the Institute for Systems Genetics and in Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Welcome, Itai. Itai Yanai Thank you, Oliver. It's fantastic to be here. Oliver Bogler And Dr. Martin Lercher, professor and head of the Institute of Computational Cell Biology at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. Welcome, Martin. Martin Lercher Well, thanks. Thank you so much for inviting us. Oliver Bogler So it seems obvious that scientists need to be creative, of course, as well as rigorous and thorough, ethical and informed and probably many other things. But we rarely ever talk about creativity, let alone teach it to early career scientists. Why is that? And what are you doing to change that? Martin Lercher Well, we think it's a disaster that it is like that. And we want to make our contribution to change that. Why that is? I think it's partly historical that, you know, it seemed more important to distinguish science from non-science, from philosophy, for example, which is great at generating ideas, but not good at throwing out wrong ideas. So historically, scientists training has focused on what we call the day science part, on the testing of ideas, and not so much on the generation of ideas. So I think that's at least part of the explanation. Itai, what do yobu think? Itai Yanai Yeah, well, it may also be that it's more straightforward to teach the day science. We can have a kind of control over the day science part because what is day science? Day science is you have a hypothesis and you're going to test it. You're going to design an experiment. You're going to build in controls. You really are calling the shots in day science and it's harder relatively to sort of wrap our minds around the notion that we cannot control the creative process like that. Oliver Bogler So you've both used the term day science that may be new to our audience. What is day science and is there a night science? Itai Yanai Yeah, these are terms that were coined by the biologist Francois Jacob, who together with Lwoff and Monod shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for elucidating essentially the principles of gene regulation for the first time. And so this Nobel Prize winning biologist, when he writes his memoir called The Statue Within, he could have taken a victory lap. He could have said, I'm such a genius. Look at this amazing work that I did. I'm just brilliant. And of course, a brilliant mind will do brilliant things. Instead, what he does in that book is paint a picture of the reality of doing science, where you're in constant confusion. You're in the cloud, as another biologist, Uri Alon, likes to say. And so he distinguishes in this book two modes: day science and night science. Day science is what from the outside, we traditionally call science, which is this march of rationality, this controlled experiments that we talked about before. And so day science is when you put on your lab coat and you know what you're going to do, but night science, that's that part where you're confused. That's that part where you need to be creative. And Martin, don't we think that there's something about this dichotomy. Doesn't it just like cut to the core of what it means to be doing the process of science? Martin Lercher Yeah, when we teach workshops about the creative process in science, I think that's the most important message that we give people, that there is this dichotomy, that there are these two complementary processes in science. When we think about how science works, we always think about what we call day science, right? The hero of day science is Sir Karl Popper, the philosopher of science who said, you know, we cannot prove that something's true, but we can falsify something. So that's what we need to do as scientists. But in reality, there's this flip side that we hardly ever talk about. And we have to constantly switch between those two modes of doing science, between day science where we test ideas, and then we have to transition into night science where we have to think about, you know, is this really how it works? Is there maybe something else that I'm missing? Is there a question that I'm not asking that I should be asking? And then once I found that question, I can move back into day science and test that. So just understanding that there are these two sides is already a big step towards using your own creativity. Oliver Bogler So of course, scientists are trained exhaustively in day science, right? I heard you mention Martin that you have a workshop that you teach, you and Itai teach on night science. So what are the skills that you're teaching attendees of those courses? Itai Yanai Yeah, we like to say that what creativity is, is essentially a bag of tricks. And we scientists, we pick up the tricks over the years. What Martin and I have been thinking about is whether we can do that in a more straightforward, streamlined way that reduces needless suffering, because the tricks that we pick up along the way are tried and true. They've been tested and they are very teachable. We can all become more creative. And so what the workshop is essentially is a set of sessions where every session we discuss a specific thinking tool that we impart. And these are general tools. It's not to solve a specific problem that a participant comes with, although we do practice on those, but these are general tools that can help you solve any problem really. Oliver Bogler Can you give me some examples? Martin Lercher Oh well, the simplest and we believe most powerful example seems almost trivial. It's just to talk to someone. We wrote an editorial about that with the title, It Takes Two to Think. And we think that if you're very lucky, you have a science buddy. You have somebody who you know very well, somebody you like, a friend, with who you like to talk about science. And the crucial thing is, it's not just about talking, it's about how you talk. And there we borrow this idea from improvisational theater. In improvisational theater, actors get on a stage, they don't have a script. And that's the same when we try to figure out something, when we try to figure out what could be the answer to some problem that we have, what could be the question that we really want to ask. We don't have a script. And if we say an idea, right? If I say an idea and Itai says, no, that's nonsense, right? Then that kills that idea. Itai Yanai That's it, the conversation's over. Martin Lercher And maybe that idea really was stupid, but I think it would kill it prematurely. We first have to figure out together what's in there, right? Whether we can develop it into something interesting. And... Itai Yanai And even if I said something stupid, there might have been a reason why I said it. And if we're curious and if we genuinely like the other person, so it works incredibly better if the participants are friends, then you say, just like Daniel Kahneman said on our podcast, when one person would say something with his collaboration with Amos Tversky, the other person would say, well, you know, on the face of it, it sounds like a silly thing to say. It sounds wrong, but we are programmed to dismiss any idea we hear and there, you know, let's be kind to one another. There must be a reason also why the person said it. Let's, let's try to explore that. And if you have the patience and if you have this sort of really openness in your heart to explore it, then magical things happen. An idea can be born. Oliver Bogler That sounds very different from your typical research group meeting where... Martin Lercher Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, as humans, we have this general tendency. We like to shoot down other people's ideas. If you say something that sounds strange to me, I'm going to tell you why it has to be wrong. Itai Yanai Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. Martin Lercher And yeah, it's a lot of fun, especially in journal clubs. And as scientists, of course, we're even worse than the average person, because we're trained to do that. We're trained to falsify everything that comes our way. But we have to. We have to suspend that if we are in creative discussions. We have, as again Daniel Kahneman said, we have to leave our critical weapons at the door and not dismiss something that the other person says just out of hand. Itai Yanai I mean, I think the basis of it is that when we're doing science, we really need to have two minds. There's two modes of thought. And it's really the interaction between these two modes of thought that constitute doing science. There's the hard thinking, very critical, very precise, and that's what we call day science thinking. That's the one that we're trained to do. That's the one where the public expects the scientists to talk like that, to use this kind of hard thinking. And our complaint is just that we are not giving full justice, we're not discussing the other mode of thought, this night science mode that's softer, that's more indulgent, that's more improvisational. And it's easy to make fun of and yet it's absolutely crucial because that's where the ideas come from. And one facet of modern science is that we really, in the end, expect people to be good at both of these kinds of thinking. You really need both. And so what Martin was discussing before that there's this big problem in modern science is that we only sort of give the glory to the hard thinking without teaching or even acknowledging the soft kind of thinking. Oliver Bogler Night science thinking is almost disreputable, right? I mean, if you if you did it in a more public setting, like a lab meeting, that would be really hard. So I understand the need to be in a safe space with a trusted individual. Itai Yanai Yeah, you have to pull down your shades. Oliver Bogler So I wonder, as you teach this to early career scientists, I imagine, how do they respond? Do they do they take to it readily or is it is it kind of tough to get them past their already existing scientific training. Martin Lercher Usually the audience at our workshop is mostly, as you say, young researchers, PhD students, or sometimes post-docs. And they've already been in this research machinery, right? They have some insights in how it works and they know how confusing it can be. So they really appreciate to see that acknowledged, right? And to hear that it's actually a part of the process. It has to be like that. You know, when Itai and I did our first fully independent project together, actually, a long time ago, we were young post-docs. And, you know, we didn't really appreciate that dichotomy ourselves at that time, right? And we were very confused and it was very frustrating that at points in that project, we didn't know anymore what we were really doing. We didn't really know anymore what the question was that we tried to answer. And just hearing that that's normal and that's actually a good and important part of science is already important. So these people really appreciate it. Itai Yanai Yeah, I think they are relieved. What I experience when we give our workshops, pardon, when I look at their faces, when we talk to them afterwards, they're so relieved because they've been so confused at how they're admitted to this program of doing a PhD and yet at no moment does anyone take them aside and tell them, okay, this is how science works. This is how you're going to get your ideas. Instead, they're sort of made to believe that it's going to be obvious. It's not obvious at all. And so I think when we put this label on, you need the night science part, you need then this other kind of thinking, and we teach them the tools of the creative process, I think they're just relieved that, okay, it's going to be okay. We are going to be taught how this is going to be done. Oliver Bogler That's fantastic to hear. And I would like to mention that you very generously share the course materials on your website at night-science .org. So anybody who's interested in diving in can find them there. Martin Lercher Yeah. So, so really the reason why we put it there is A, because we think it's really important for anyone in science who's not thought about these things before. But B, we really want this to be taught as at many places as possible. We give our workshops, but we can't possibly give workshops to every PhD student on the planet. We really need help with that. We think it's important that people get this kind of training. And we really want to help other educators to give that kind of training. And, you know, of course they can develop their own material, but they can use whatever we have in whichever way they like, in whichever way they think is appropriate. Oliver Bogler You've also been sharing these ideas in a series of editorials in Genome Biology and more recently in Nature Biotechnology. What have you written about? Itai Yanai Yeah, so each piece is a thinking tool. It's a trick that we think all experienced scientists know and yet should be taught in a normal way. Right now, what happens is if you're a PhD student, it really depends on what kind of a mentor you have. If you have a mentor that teaches you these tools, then you're lucky. And if you don't have a mentor that teaches you them, well, then you will not know how to do them and you're going to suffer needlessly. We think this could be taught in a regular way. We think that these pieces are putting these tools out where anyone can get them. And so it kind of democratizes the teaching of the process. And we hope that these materials, as Martin was saying, are put together in a course that's adopted everywhere. So we think that just like graduate students are taught experimental design and bioethics, they should also be taught a course, perhaps called ‘process’, on what are the thinking tools, what is the way of generating ideas. We think it's just crucial. And you know what, I think we can't overstate the importance of this. I would go as far as saying that it's a matter of national security. So, Oliver, you work for the government and so I think you'll respond to this. This is a matter of national security for us to have the most creative research possible. And there's been a trend lately in science to have larger and larger groups work together when we know that actually, large groups, while they're good at executing a big idea, are far less good at coming up with the idea in the first place. For that, small groups, as we were saying earlier, it takes two to think, are much more creative. And so I think that what hurts us is that it sounds like this is a soft kind of science, but actually, it's crucial. Actually, I want to tell you a story. I was in line to check in a suitcase at the airport and I was talking to the person ahead of me and she said, oh, you're at NYU. What do you teach? And I said, oh, you know, I'm teaching this new course about the creative scientific process. And she said, sounds like bullshit. And then she caught herself, but you know, because she was a New Yorker, she said the truth out right away with no filter. And I think she speaks for all of us. You know, it does sound like too soft, but really, you know, we require it. So I think it does catch on because I really believe it's super important. Oliver Bogler So you've shared one reaction with me, Itai, quite forthright. I wonder what, in more general terms, the response to your editorials has been. Itai Yanai Oh, to that, it's been fantastic. I think, Martin, what do you think? Martin Lercher Yeah. No, no, I think, well, the response has been fantastic. But to be honest, there's more people who listen to the podcast than read the editorials. Itai Yanai Yeah, yo, these kids today Oliver. Martin Lercher Yeah, yes. Nope. Oliver Bogler Well, okay. So you mentioned the podcast, Martin, tell us about that. Martin Lercher Yeah, so in the podcast, you know, or let's start, let's start earlier. We started writing those editorials. And basically, Itai and I would improvise together, you know, about what should we write the next editorial, like what should be the topic? What do we think is important? And we covered a lot of we think important tools for scientific creativity. But then we thought, you know, that's just Itai and I, right? There's so many other creative scientists out there who have their own tools, which may be different from person to person. And we need to talk to those people about their creative process. And that's how we came up with a podcast. And actually, initially, I was a bit hesitant. Itai had to repeatedly come with that idea until I finally agreed. Itai Yanai Yeah, it wasn't easy, Oliver. It wasn't easy to convince him. Martin Lercher But now I love it. Oliver Bogler But it was worth it. Itai Yanai He's like, I'm going to be one of these podcast people. Oh, my God. You know, I'm going to have to wear different clothes. Martin Lercher Exactly. No, anyway, so what we do in the podcast is we talk... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/31079688

Live from AACR! 04/25/2024

Live from AACR! In this episode, host Oliver Bogler speaks with NCI fellows live at the American Association for Cancer Researchers (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. They share their science, career path, and thoughts on attending the AACR annual meeting. Show Notes: · , Research Fellow, Metabolic Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: ., Postdoctoral Fellow, Laboratory of Translational Genomics, Michael Dean Research Laboratory, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: , Predoctoral Fellow, Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: , Postbaccalaureate Fellow, Oncogenomics Section, Center for Cancer Research, NCI Abstract Title: , Postbaccalaureate Fellow and iCURE Scholar, Clinical Genetics Branch, Trans-Divisional Research Program, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: , Postbaccalaureate Fellow, Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: Ad: TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI's Center for Cancer Training. Today, we're doing something a bit different – we are talking to people at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. This meeting is one of the high-points of the calendar for people working to end cancer as we know it for all, and it is truly big tent – at the April 2024 conference in San Diego, over 22,000 people registered to attend. AACR is a strong community of over 55,000 people and 53% are Associate Members who, according to the AACR website, are young laboratory scientists and physicians-in-training (graduate students, medical students and residents, and clinical and postdoctoral fellows). I’ve been a member since my postdoc days – and I am proud of the way AACR welcomes and supports early career individuals. There is a lot going on at the AACR annual meeting – far too much to cover in this episode – check out AACR.org to learn more. We are going to focus in on one of the most important elements of a scientific conference – the opportunity it gives to scientists to present their work to their peers. And specifically, we will visit with NCI fellows at their poster sessions. Because of this format we won’t have a Your Turn segment – Your Turn will be back next time. Let’s start by meeting some of our fellows and hearing about their science. So I'm speaking with Wayne Lawrence, who's here presenting his poster. You are a research fellow at NCI. Right, Wayne? Wayne Lawrence Yes, I am a research fellow. Oliver Bogler So tell me, where in the NCI are you? Wayne Lawrence I'm in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, specifically in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch. So all my research seeks to understand why are certain people more likely to be diagnosed with cancer, and why is the mortality proportion greater amongst certain populations than others? So what role does the social environment contribute to disparities in cancer outcomes? So part of my work here, for example, is I want to examine the role of severe housing cost burden on premature death due to cancer. So we know that in the United States, more and more people are spending more of their household income on housing. So we've seen that recently, there's been an increase in people expending 50% or more of their income on housing, which we know that if you spend that much on housing, you’re more likely to sacrifice seeking medical care or other basic needs to thrive. Oliver Bogler Right, you just don't have money for your medicines or to see the doctor. Wayne Lawrence Exactly. So I want to see among individuals that reside in areas with high housing cost burden is that associated with an increased risk and premature deaths due to cancer? So what we did is that we pulled data from the American Community Survey, and we pulled housing cost burden national throughout the entire United States. We see that in the coastal areas, both East Coast and West Coast and parts of the south areas, they had that highest quintile of severe housing cost burden. So we wanted to see is that associated with increased risk of premature cancer mortality. What we observed is that compared to areas that the lowest severe housing cost burden, so lowest number of people that spend less than 50% of their household income on housing, compared to them, those who reside in the highest quintile had an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Oliver Bogler What are the practical implications? Wayne Lawrence So, my work, I guess, at the end of day is to provide evidence to show to highlight populations that are disadvantaged or structurally marginalized to say, hey, this is a group that we have not truly examined, or this is a group that is disproportionately burdened by cancer and disease. And we try to gather information and hopefully to pass on to inform policy or interventions more specifically. So, my master's and doctorate are in public health in epidemiology and with a focus in cancer epidemiology. But my training at the end of the day is in social epidemiology, so I examine why does where you live, work, age, play, how does that affect your quality of life, of disease risk and long-term survival? Oliver Bogler Fantastic. And if I can ask, do you already have plans for your next step? Wayne Lawrence Yes, I'm getting ready or am in the process of preparing to apply for tenure track positions. I've been fortunate to get some recruitment letters. So I'm gonna start seeing what's out there. [music] Oliver Bogler Next I caught up with Sonam Tulsyan, postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Michael Dean's lab in laboratory of Translational Genomics in the Center for Cancer Research. Sonam Tulsyan Okay, I'm presenting on high rate of episomal HPV 16, which I found in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. I have taken 16 head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. These are fresh frozen tumor biopsies, and out of 10 samples I found 8 to be episomal, and 2 to be HPV negative. And I've also done the whole genome distribution of the CNV burden. And I found that there is a gain of chromosome 3q and chromosome 5q. And sometimes some activities also going on in chromosome 8, and chromosome 12 over here. It's causing chromosome duplications, ploidy. And then basically the chromosome integrates at E1 E2, and which is which are responsible for the E6 is E7 gene activation. Oliver Bogler And is that then associated with the development of cancer? Sonam Tulsyan Yes, especially for oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. So this is a special subtype of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, where HPV… it is basically dependent on HPV. HPV infection. Oliver Bogler And so this knowledge that you've developed, will that lead to better screening or more prevention, how can you apply this practically? Sonam Tulsyan This is responsible for better screening. [music] Oliver Bogler All right, we're talking with Patricia Erickson, who is a graduate student at the University of Maryland and doing her research at the NCI. Tell us about your work. Patricia Erickson Yes. So for my, my poster here, and my dissertation research is focused on pesticide exposures, and risk of cancer and specifically, I was looking at carbaryl. And I did another project looking at telomere length, but today carbaryl and it's a pesticide that's used residentially and agriculturally. And so I looked at a host of different cancer sites, I think about 30, and did different analysis for and I found some really interesting findings for stomach cancer and aggressive prostate cancer. Oliver Bogler Okay, so this it's an insecticide. So it's primarily coming into our food chain, is that kind of what's happening or food supply? Patricia Erickson I'm looking at it in terms of occupational exposure. Oliver Bogler Oh, people were spraying it onto the field. Sorry, OK. Patricia Erickson Yes, people whore are spraying it, but you could go to Home Depot and buy it and spray it yourself. So oh, there's potential to be exposed through dietary sources to residential sources, and then occupational ways as well. Oliver Bogler Okay. And what and what did you find? Did you find that it was a significant risk factor? Patricia Erickson Yep. So for stomach cancer, I found that those who are in the highest exposure category had about a twofold increased risk of stomach cancer, compared to the non-users. It is based on small numbers, okay. But there was something there. And then when I lagged the exposure by five years, which means I just count the exposure five years prior to the diagnosis, we're still seeing about a twofold increased risk of stomach cancer. Oliver Bogler So I mean, stomach cancers, probably not that common, but a twofold increase is significant. Patricia Erickson Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. Yeah. Oliver Bogler So what do you think this should lead to? Should we ban this compound? Or should it just be handled with more care? Patricia Erickson I think we don't know enough yet. So my next step, there's some evidence that suggests that when carbaryl reacts with nitrate, it forms this compound known as n-nitroso-carbaryl. And that's previously been associated with gastric cancer in rats, and it's shown to be mutagenic. And you can be exposed through drinking water, to nitrates in drinking water and red meat. And so my next step is kind of to look at some if I have enough numbers, to look at dietary exposures to nitrates, and kind of parse out that association a bit more. Oliver Bogler You told me just a moment ago, before we started taping that you are defending very soon. Patricia Erickson Yes, in five days. Oliver Bogler In five days, that is very soon! So by the time our listeners hear this, you will have defended Patricia Erickson Yes. Oliver Bogler That's fantastic. I wish you all the best with that. And do you already have a next step in mind? Patricia Erickson I do. I'm going to do a postdoc at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Oliver Bogler In Utah… Patricia Erickson In Salt Lake City. Yeah. Oliver Bogler Very nice. Very nice. Why the Huntsman? Patricia Erickson It kind of happened. I wasn't looking for it. But a couple people had sent me the job posting. And that was the third time this group came on my radar. And I took it as a sign. I emailed them, they responded. And three weeks later, I went out for an interview and got offered the position and fell in love. And now moving to Salt Lake City. Oliver Bogler And you know already what you're going to be working on? Patricia Erickson Um, yeah, the group will be joining does a lot with colorectal cancers. So that will be the focus but haven't figured out exactly what projects. Oliver Bogler But again, sort of exposure, epidemiology type research, or is it something completely different? Patricia Erickson Potentially both? It could be some exposures. It could be shifting gear. Yeah. Oliver Bogler So this is the time to shift gear when you're when you go for postdoc, right. Patricia Erickson Yup. [music] Oliver Bogler Alright, I'm talking with Katrina Jia. She is in the Center for Cancer Research and you're presenting a poster tell us about your research. Katrina Jia So our research is on rhabdomyosarcoma, which is the most common soft tissue childhood sarcoma, and it's on the alveolar subtype, which is most commonly characterized by PAX3-FOXO1. And we wanted to find small molecule compounds that suppress the PAX3-FOXO1 levels, and we to do that we have to directly monitor those levels. So we tagged PAX3-FOXO1 with a HiBiT tag, which is a small fragment of the NanoLuc luciferase enzyme. So when you add LgBiT and a substrate, it luminesces. And then we validated that it was actually tagged PAX3-FOXO1. And you can see like the HiBiT tagged cell lines are closely related to the parental cell lines compared to like, fusion negative cell lines, by RT-PCR. Oliver Bogler So it's kind of a way of screening for drugs, right? Unknown Speaker Is makes it easy to screen like a whole bunch of drugs. Oliver Bogler Okay, so like high throughput screening? Okay, so where did the drugs come from, that you're interested in? Katrina Jia Yeah. So we used the MIPE 5.0 drug library. Oliver Bogler OK what is MIPE? I've never heard of MIPE. Sounds like an acronym. Katrina Jia I don’t remember the acronym, exactly, but it is a library of compounds with known mechanisms of action mechanisms. And then also, most of them are in clinical trials or FDA approved already. Oliver Bogler So, really drugs that you could take to the clinic pretty quickly. Katrina Jia Yeah, hoping that it can translate. And then we wanted to narrow down our screen to drugs that downregulated PAX3-FOXO1before the cells died. So we did that in two cell lines. And we found that like a lot of CDK inhibitors were part of that screen. Oliver Bogler So, CDK, that's a cyclin dependent kinase right? Katrina Jia And then we wanted to combine it with like an already known treatment like either vincristine or irinotecan , but we have more data for vincristine. Oliver Bogler So, traditional chemotherapeutics? Katrina Jia So you can see like, 0.33 nanomolar and 37 and below for TGO2, there are synergistic at those doses. And those are the doses like right under the IC50s for both, okay, single drugs. Oliver Bogler That’s encouraging. Katrina Jia Yeah, that's promising. Oliver Bogler Tell me a little about your career. Your postbaccing now but you're on your way to medical school, right? Katrina Jia Yes, in July. Oliver Bogler So where are you going? Katrina Jia I'm going to the University of Arizona, Phoenix. That's where I'm originally from. Oliver Bogler Okay. Okay, fantastic. And then are you planning a career in medicine or also having medicine and research together? Katrina Jia Right now medicine I'm not too sure like, how much research I can get involved in I mean, I would like to but okay, I know. Yeah. And I don't like really know what specialty I want to go. Oliver Bogler Yeah, you got to give yourself some time to choose. Will it be, might it be oncology, it could be oncology? Katrina Jia Yeah, I was thinking of oncology or like cardiology, I'm not sure yet. Those are like the two things I kind of know about. Oliver Bogler Okay, fantastic. [music] Oliver Bogler All right, I'm here with Jazmyn Bess at her poster. Jazmyn, tell me about the research you're sharing here in AACR. Jazmyn Bess Yeah, so the Connect for Cancer Prevention Study wanted to conduct a pilot looking at how processing time impacts cell free DNA quality and quantity. And so the Connect for Cancer Prevention Study is a prospective cohort where we're looking to recruit participants between 30 and 70, from 10 different health care systems across the US. And so we're hoping to monitor them over time to understand the etiology of cancer as well as being informed about prevention as well as understanding early cancer detection. And so liquid biopsy, of course, is a promising cancer detection technology that Connect is interested in incorporating into our baseline collections. Oliver Bogler Why is that? Why is liquid biopsy so exciting? Jazmyn Bess So liquid biopsy, of course, can detect cancer in the blood as well as monitor tumor progression over time. And so being able to incorporate this technology is very crucial, because this will help to detect cancer early on, as well as you know, helping us to understand where people are in terms of stages of cancer. And so it's a really big public health impact. Oliver Bogler So in the future, there might be you might go to your, your, your general doctor, your family doctor, and they take blood for a bunch of reasons. And then they could also do a test to see if there's any reason to maybe suspect that there's cancer. Is that the kind of scenario you're hoping to? Right? Jazmyn Bess Yes, yeah. Oliver Bogler And then, of course, also, if you're already a patient, following your progression through through treatment, and how the cancer behaves, right? Correct. So this critical that, you know, when you take a blood sample, how it fares between taking it and testing it, that's what you're focused on. So what did you find? Jazmyn Bess So what we found was that processing time doesn't meaningfully impact cell-free DNA quality and quantity, which is good. And so we are underway to do a second pilot, when we are going to look at other pre analytical variables, as well as other tube types, and other QC assays to see the optimal conditions for doing this local biopsy assay. Oliver Bogler So lots of details. And I guess the reason you're doing this now is that then when Connect really scales up, you want to make sure that you're doing it in the best way. Jazmyn Bess Exactly. Right. Oliver Bogler So it's really important prep work. Very cool. Very cool. So you're in the postbac program in the iCure program. What's that, like? Jazmyn Bess So iCure has been phenomenal. It is a great program that helps, you know, fellows who are interested in cancer health disparities to explore different research areas. And so it has been a phenomenal experience. I'm on my second year. And so being able to come here to conferences like AACR, because of iCure is phenomenal, right? You get to connect with so many different people learn the research, and just grow as a scientist, but also as a person. Oliver Bogler So you mentioned that your second year. So you're thinking actively about what's next. Do you have anything you can share with us on that score? Jazmyn Bess Yes. So I do plan to apply to doctoral programs this fall where I will be starting my PhD next fall 2025 in epidemiology. Oliver Bogler Okay, so you're going research. Cool. Very cool. Oliver Bogler All right, I'm talking with Deborah Tadesse. She's a postbac at the NCI and she's here presenting some of her research. Deborah tell us about your your science. Deborah Tadesse Sure. Um, so I'm in the population science, I'm in OEEB. So what I'm really doing right now is looking at the interaction between occupational exposure and genetic susceptibility and risk of bladder cancer. The majority of my work involves bladder cancer within the occupational exposures category. Oliver Bogler So, that's things you exposed to at work, like, like I see on your poster solvents and things like that. So if you're in the building industry or something like that, Deborah Tadesse Particularly for ours, it would be people who are auto mechanics. People who are exposed to like gasoline, a lot. Oliver Bogler Gasoline, right. And what did you find? Deborah Tadesse So, we found that in individuals who are exposed to occupational solvents, specifically... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/30951128

Advocacy, Mentoring, and Equity in Cancer Research 04/18/2024

Advocacy, Mentoring, and Equity in Cancer Research In this episode, we hear from Dr. Khadijah Mitchell, an Assistant Professor of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center and a former NCI fellow. Dr. Mitchell discusses her research on lung cancer and health disparities. She highlights the importance of the menthol cigarette ban in reducing health disparities and shares her experience in advocacy work. Dr. Mitchell shares details on books she has co-authored that emphasize the significance of inclusive instruction and mentoring in science. She provides advice for those interested in careers in cancer health disparities and more. Show Notes: (book) (book) Ad: Your Turn Recommendations: TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and we hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI’s Center for Cancer Training. Today we're talking to Dr. Khadijah Mitchell, Assistant Professor in the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center and Temple University in Philadelphia about her work, her professional engagement and launching a research program in an academic setting. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make an interesting recommendation and where we invite you to take your turn. Dr. Mitchell, welcome. Khadijah A. Mitchell So thank you so much, Dr. Bogler, for the invitation. Oliver Bogler So you joined Fox Chase in July, 2023 to pursue your research on cancer health disparities. What prompted the move? Khadijah A. Mitchell Well, previously I was an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college and there I balanced my time with research as well as teaching. And it was just the natural evolution as my research program grew, I knew I had to shift to a research institution that would accommodate future directions that my research was going in. And so here, I'm really fortunate that we, because I'm at a comprehensive cancer center, designated by the NCI. We have an Office of Outreach and Engagement, and a lot of what I do engages underrepresented populations. And so to have that research and infrastructure to allow my work to go in any direction was really appealing to me. Oliver Bogler Please tell us more about your research. Khadijah A. Mitchell Oh, sure. So recently, I've focused my energy on lung cancer because I think a lot that we can consider lung cancer an underdog of the cancer community. We have a lot of stigma associated with this particular cancer type. So I think that there's not as large of a survivor advocate community as you may see with breast or prostate cancer. So more people actually pass away unfortunately from this type of cancer than some of those other ones can bind and we know a huge risk factor is smoking and so I have an interest in that particular type of environmental exposure but also radon which is odorless colorless gas that causes lung cancer and so right now I'm really interested in the environmental exposome and how that impacts our genome so thinking about these interactions. And, you know, I think that one powerful thing about the radon is we see that that is actually the leading cause of lung cancer in never smokers. And so I hope that these projects will help us to find either new smoking-related or radon-related biomarkers that could be risk factors and that we can change, for example, lung cancer screening guidelines and policies that will help a lot of people. Oliver Bogler You used the term exposome. It's not a term I've heard before, but I guess it's another “omic” . What is the exposome? Khadijah A. Mitchell Exactly, so that's a great question before I delved into this I also did not know that So we have internal and external exposure and it literally is the sum collections of all your exposures. So whether it's chronic or acute and how that changes your biology. I've looked at genomics transcriptomics proteomics in the past and I never have integrated this exposome. So really excited about where that's going. Oliver Bogler So the exposome is a sort of, how should I think about it? Insults to the body like radon you mentioned, or I guess ultraviolet light or toxins. But is it also beneficial things like vitamins or is that not considered to be part of the exposome? Khadijah A. Mitchell It is considered to be part of the exposome. Interestingly I think it is a net-sum game. So some of the things are good and you can think of them as pro, and some are anti. And sometimes even a little exposure to things that we may think, oh, that's probably not the best for our body to be exposed to. In fact, it can prime you to repair that later on. Oliver Bogler So last year, the new National Cancer Plan was unveiled by the President's Cancer Panel, and in response to President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden's Moonshot goals of reducing cancer mortality by at least 50 % over the next 25 years, a big part of that will be cancer prevention. And that in turn includes further reduction in tobacco use. You've already mentioned your interest in lung cancer. In connection with that, there's been public discourse about menthol cigarettes recently. In particular, that's been a spark point. What's that debate about and what's your perspective on it and the National Cancer Plan in general? Khadijah A. Mitchell One I have to say I'm very excited that we are revisiting the menthol cigarette debate and the National Cancer Plan because this is not the first time we've had this debate in public discourse. And the issue is that although cigarette smoking has gone down for decades, in fact, menthol cigarette smoking has actually increased. And it's actually a third of the market. And so there have been statewide bans and some citywide bans who are trying to put forth the menthol ban. We've been successful with other types of flavorings and additives, but for some reason, the menthol has been tricky. So by the federal government stepping in and saying, we're going to protect the health of Americans, that was very significant. And so I think that it's very timely that we're having this discussion again right now because a lot of our conversations center on vaping and thinking about flavoring there and not so much in combustible tobacco. And that is still the leading cause of death and disability. And so by targeting that, we have a huge opportunity for public health. I think that in particular for the populations that I study, the most vulnerable, they're more likely to smoke menthol cigarettes compared to others. So for example, when we look at African Americans who do smoke, 85 % of them smoke menthol cigarettes. It's a very high, when we look at veterans, youth, LGBTQ, so there are all these populations that are basically have been targeted with the menthol tobacco. And so we have a great opportunity to help reduce the risk and save those lives targeting the menthol debate. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up the social justice aspects of this. How do we enforce this ban? Of course, the FDA, the NIH is not an enforcement body. And so we have to think about how to be delicate and sensitive to that to those populations who are at risk. Oliver Bogler So I'm curious about how you pick the topics that you work on in your science. What's your creative process? How do you settle upon, as you have at this point in your career, lung cancer as the point of emphasis? Khadijah A. Mitchell So that's interesting. So I actually have the same process I use for creative writing. So in my spare time, I generate ideas. And so I try to use this with my science. So that includes when I am idea generating, appealing to all of my senses. So I make sure that, you know, sight, you know, smell, taste, those type of things. So that's for the aesthetic. But then I actually like to think of big questions that maybe individuals haven't considered or new approaches. So I think that a lot of science is interdisciplinary. And sometimes we have to think of who is not at the table or what perspective is not being brought in. And maybe that's my default as a health disparities researcher. I think what am I missing? So I guess I have deference for my own knowledge. And so it tends to be that I go to the literature and I see what people are thinking about, but maybe what colleagues in different silos are looking at and how I can bridge that gap. So, you know, I think that is something that has happened many times throughout my career is that I look at what another discipline or approach or friends in that way. And in fact, it's not just science. Sometimes I think about how humanities and social scientists view problems and whether its in salons and cafes and the way they exchange ideas and that generates energy. So I'm a high extrovert so I very much enjoy group discussions and that really gets my juices going. So that's my process. Oliver Bogler That's really interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, so I mean, you really connect with all kinds of different inputs to try and, I guess, I don't know what the right word is, but you kind of take a bigger perspective rather than always being in the details where I'm sure you are when you're doing your analysis and things like that. And of course you do all kinds of other things. And I want to just touch on one of those right now. You've also co-authored two books. One called “What Inclusive Instructors Do? Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching”. And more recently “Enhancing Inclusive Instruction”, which came out mid -March. Please tell us about these books. Khadijah A. Mitchell I'm a first generation college student and I had a very supportive family who poured into my love of science, but it was until I became a college student that it was my instructors that really helped guide me and kept me in the STEM pipeline. And so I guess this was my way to pay it forward by thinking about as a scientist, a full-fledged card-carrying cancer geneticist. And I will say that my experience at NIH also poured into this because I had the opportunity to participate in the science and teaching science certificate program, and I also had opportunity to teach at the FAES graduate school. And so because of that, I thought about how there was a diversity of students and learners, ages, backgrounds, visible and invisible attributes of their identity. And so that is what helped inform my desire to do the work for these books. And these are evidence-based because as a scientist we like data. So they're nationwide studies. And in one study we asked instructors and in the other studies we actually asked the learners. And so that is what's different with the two books. The first one is getting principles and practices from instructors and the second is asking the impact of being able to assess those efforts from a learner's perspective and also as individuals who want to continue with making sure that we're being effective in our inclusive teaching and that everyone has an opportunity to learn. Oliver Bogler So what are the key take home messages from the two books if you might indulge me? Khadijah A. Mitchell Sure, so I guess there are a ton of… they’re chock full of… The first one is that inclusive teachers or inclusive instructors, I should say, that they actually have a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. And I think that translates whether you're an instructor at undergraduate, graduate, health professions. We even had lawyers and legal scholars review this book and use this in professional practice. So that is the one thing that was throughout the book, throughout discipline, stage training, adjunct, tenure track, so many different type of institutions, that they had this growth mindset and that they were willing to acknowledge the differences in their students. And so we think about from the student perspective, they really appreciated having choice, which I think is somehow sometimes against dogma. They really loved having a choice of the type of assessment, type of learning, the way that they wanted to be addressed. But I think what bridges the two is relationship building. So both of them talked about having positive relationships in a classroom, in a laboratory setting, and how that was important. Oliver Bogler So in addition to doing research and writing books, you also speak on health equity quite a lot. You serve as a subject matter expert on health disparities for the American Lung Association and the LUNGevity Foundation. And you've guided government health policy in the Pennsylvania Department of Health in various roles, Office of Health Equity Advisor and so on. So tell us about the advocacy work. That sounds really important as well. Khadijah A. Mitchell It's wonderful when we are working in our labs and we're working with colleagues and collaborators. But I think what is really powerful is when we see that work being translated at a policy level, whether we at the local, state, or federal. And so that has been really rewarding for me. So in the last few years, like you mentioned, I've had the opportunity to lend my health equity expertise to these different divisions. And I think what has been so powerful to me is to see in real time health metrics change and health outcomes. And so particularly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I was able to give advice to our governor and these evidence-based recommendations were actually taken up so we could see in real time, not only the general population, but in particular cancer patients because healthcare resources were allocated in different ways. So I think that has been wonderful to me to see the way that our research is directly applied into public health practice and particularly for disease control and prevention. So it's been very exciting also to speak to my earlier point. I'm able to collaborate with colleagues from totally different backgrounds and we have points of synergy. And so there's been new collaborations that have come from even in that service for from our research. So that has been really amazing. Oliver Bogler Well, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk to Dr. Mitchell about her path to her current position. [music] Alexandra Richardson Have you ever thought about harnessing the power of data science in your cancer research, but aren't sure where to start? The good news is that you can take a step toward unlocking the potential of data science with the National Cancer Institute's new Cancer Data Science Training, your gateway to free online training and resources to help you learn how to work with big data and deal with big data problems in cancer research. Go to datascience.cancer.gov/training and there you can take the Data Science 101 video course to learn the basics about data science skills such as coding, machine learning, biostatistics, and more. Or explore the Cancer Data Science project lifecycle where you'll learn how to start your own projects and see where you fit in as a cancer researcher. NCI experts wrote six basic guides with tips you can apply to your own research. Or explore the training guide library, your easy access toolbox of resources for cancer data methods, tools, and technologies. Use it to get quick answers on identifying and gathering data, predictive modeling, data visualization, and more. Data science is accelerating discovery in cancer research. Head to datascience.cancer.gov/training and be a part of it today. [music ends] Oliver Bogler And we're back. Dr. Mitchell, my favorite question. What first sparked your interest in science? Khadijah A. Mitchell Oh, so that’s an easy question. When I was 12, a family friend went into sickle cell crisis and I asked my mother, I said, you know, his name was Phil. I said, well, how can Phil is in so much pain? And so my mother, she was my first PI. She said, look it up. Why couldn't she just tell me? So I decided, and this was before the internet, so I probably dating myself. I had a word book, encyclopedias. I couldn't find it. So I called the local hospital. And I remember the operator said, I said, I would like to talk to someone about sickle cell, please. And she connected me with the genetic counseling clinic. And the genetic counselor that I spoke to happened to be very empathetic and kind to a young Dr. Mitchell-to-be. And she said, you seem very interested in understanding this disease. Would you like to come down and talk to me? So my mom took me to the hospital and went to the clinic. And, you know, it just so happened she was an African American woman. So that was the first African American woman geneticist that I ever met. And she said, well, if you're interested, you can volunteer here in our clinic. And so she said, you have to be 14. So two years went by, she probably thought I might not see her again, but I came back a-knockin'. And so from the age of 14 to 18, I actually volunteered in a genetic counseling clinic. And that's when I discovered my love for human genetics. I thought, and even to this day, it's absolutely beautiful that one change can just impact our life. So I asked them all where can I go to be a great human geneticist and they said Johns Hopkins, they have a human genetics clinic and I learned about Victor McKusick who is a hero of mine. And so I said well I'm going to go to Johns Hopkins and I grew up and actually did go to Johns Hopkins and get my PhD in human genetics because of that formative experience so that's when I knew I wanted to be a scientist Oliver Bogler That's a phenomenal story. So I guess kudos to your mom for not answering your question. Khadijah A. Mitchell Exactly. Oliver Bogler Yeah, fantastic. So you went to Johns Hopkins and you studied human genetics for your PhD. What particular aspect were you focused on? Khadijah A. Mitchell So I had developed a passion for cancer epigenetics and I was fortunate enough I worked with Dr. Steven Baylin… who had always read his research and even, you know, I guess one thing, our neighbor… I worked at the National Human Genome Research Institute right before I started my PhD. And I called, one day I sent him an email and I said, can I come work with you the summer before? And he said, sure. And it was just a wonderful experience that this world renowned scientists, right, would take this post-bac and start early, basically. And so I really had a great experience and I joined that lab. And so I focused on colon cancer epigenetics when I was a graduate student. But also when I was at Johns Hopkins, because I was in our, another NCI Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, we had a center to reduce cancer health disparities there. And so I was able to get, become a trainee in the center. So although at the lab I was learning a lot about colon cancer epigenetics, I was learning about screening and engaging that population in the community in Baltimore. And so I ended up getting, along with my PhD, a certificate in health disparities and health inequality from the School of Public Health. So it was this beautiful mashup of what happened in the bench and going from bench to the bedside and understanding the translational work from Dr. Baylin. But going from the bench to the community block is what I learned to do from our Center to Reduce Cancer Disparities in our School Public Health. Oliver Bogler That's fascinating. And obviously that experience had a profound impact on what you're doing today, right? But I don't want to get too far ahead. I want to note that, again, while you were a graduate student and doing this health... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/30865243

Together for Tomorrow: Tackling Childhood Cancer 04/04/2024

Together for Tomorrow: Tackling Childhood Cancer In this episode, we get insights from three guests - Dr. Brigitte Widemann, Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch (POB) and Special Advisor to the NCI Director for Childhood Cancer, Dr. Andrea Gross, an Assistant Research Physician, and Sneh Patel, a Postbac Fellow in the Pediatric Oncology Branch within NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. They share their perspectives on the unique challenges faced in treating pediatric cancers and why research on pediatric oncology is crucial for the overall treatment of the patient. They also emphasize the importance of collaboration and the role of patients and advocacy groups. They also share their career journey and advice for aspiring physician-scientists, and much more! Show Notes: · · · · (POB) · · · · Ad: Your Turn Recommendations · · · TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute, where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI's Center for Cancer Training. Today, we're talking about research on pediatric cancers and about combining medicine and research to make advances against these devastating diseases. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn. So it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Brigitte Widemann, Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch in the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute. She's also the head of the Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Section and serves as special advisor to the NCI Director for Childhood Cancer. Welcome. Brigitte Widemann Thank you. It's great to be here. Oliver Bogler I'm also very excited to welcome two members of Dr. Wiedemann's research team, Dr. Andrea Gross, former heme/onc fellow, now assistant research physician in the Pediatric Oncology Branch. Welcome. Andrea Gross Thank you. Oliver Bogler And Sneh Patel, who is currently doing a post-bac and is also on the research team in pediatric oncology. Welcome. Sneh Patel Thank you for having me. Oliver Bogler Dr. Widemann. Brigitte, what are some of the unique challenges in treating pediatric cancers compared to adult cancers and how does your team address these challenges? Brigitte Widemann Thank you. I think the challenges are multiple -fold, but we also have made a lot of progress. One of the challenges is it's a very small patient population. It's about 1% of adult cancers. There are only around 15,000 or so cancers that occur in children and adolescents per year. Biologically, cancers in children are very different from adult cancers, but pharmaceutical companies focus on the common cancers and that makes drug development and new clinical trial sometimes very, very difficult. There are many different types of pediatric cancers, some where the progress has been tremendous and we have very high cure rates, but others where unfortunately the progress has been really lagging for the last two or three decades even, and in particular for pediatric and young adult cancer patients that have metastatic disease that has spread or that have disease that has come back after frontline treatment. At the NIH, we work in a space where we focus on areas that may not be done by the big cooperative groups. We want to complement and synergize, and we very much build on developing intramural - extramural collaborations. And the last point I want to make, we have the wonderful NIH Clinical Center where we can bring patients from anywhere in the world. And that has been a very unique resource to study some of the very rare cancers that would be difficult to study elsewhere. Oliver Bogler Yeah, and you mentioned the Clinical Center. So there's quite a lot of history there, right? In fact, some of the earliest breakthroughs in chemotherapy and combination chemotherapy at the clinical center in the middle of last century was made in pediatric diseases, right? Brigitte Widemann Absolutely, absolutely. And including leukemias. And for me, one of the big learning lessons was the researchers that then treated young kids with leukemia, they were destined to die. They used combinatorial approaches and people said, you are killing these patients with the treatment. But this was what led to combinatorial therapy, which is a lesson I always try to think of because I'm more an incrementalist. Sometimes we have to think big and be brave. Oliver Bogler So that work is still influencing the way the Pediatric Oncology Branch does its research today? Brigitte Widemann Yeah. Oliver Bogler Dr. Gross, do you want to elaborate on that? Andrea, please. Andrea Gross Just to add exactly what Brigitte said, that pediatric oncology is its own unique universe and absolutely the types of advances we've seen in the, especially in the leukemia world are the ones that we're hoping to see now in the solid tumor worlds, because, you know, as Brigitte mentioned a little bit, the survival rate for pediatric leukemia when they first started doing those studies that you mentioned was very, very low, almost zero. And now the overall survival rate for all comers of pediatric leukemias over 80%, which obviously isn't perfect and we want to do better, but it's amazing compared to what it was. Unfortunately, some of that same progress hasn't been seen in the solid tumor space where for patients with the metastatic or relapsed refractory solid tumors and sarcomas, the outcomes are much poorer in general. And so, you know, I think we're hoping with some of the exciting advances in the last decade or so with immunotherapies, cellular therapies. many of which have been driven by work here at the Clinical Center and elsewhere to try to make progress in some of those more difficult tumors. Oliver Bogler So why do you think that is? Why were leukemias more initially tractable to these sort of combinatorial approaches? And was that just lucky that people started with those diseases? If they'd started with the solid tumors, the successes would not have been the same, right? Brigitte Widemann No, I don't think the successes would have been the same. And we actually tried to adapt what was done in leukemia with high doses and multi-agent chemotherapy. We've made progress in solid tumors, but the one tumor that one could highlight, neuroblastoma, where we give multi-agent chemotherapy to stem cell transplants and radiation and surgery, it is a boatload of very toxic treatment and still the rates of survival are’nt nearly as good. And I think it's the biology of the disease that is different, but also getting access to the sites of disease is a very important question. One of the reasons, maybe brain tumors in particular, we haven't made much progress. So I think understanding the basic science and the biology and then using this to develop innovative treatments, it's a key component. But yes, you're right, Oliver. Andrea Gross You're talking to a couple of people who are focused on the solid tumor space, you know I think from the leukemia side, one of the big advantages they have is they can look at their tumor all throughout the course of treatment. It's much easier to access a piece of the tumor. You can get it from blood, from bone marrow, to really see what's happening at every stage of treatment. And they've been able to use that knowledge and learn about the biology of what happens in response to treatment, what's happening in resistance. With solid tumors, that becomes much trickier because you have to do a biopsy, which is often an invasive procedure. And until recent years, honestly, unless it was for clinical diagnostic purposes, we often didn't do research biopsies for children because it was considered not necessary. But I think there's been a real shift in the understanding of how important getting an understanding of that basic biology is. And so even when there might not be a direct clinical indication having, for patients who are on research protocols, regular biopsies at the time of progression or on treatment so we can really get a better sense of the biology of what's happening is something that I think is going to be more and more important and maybe one of the reasons the leukemia side has been able to make more progress than the solid tumor side. Oliver Bogler You can close the loop between what you're doing clinically and the response in the biology more quickly. So, Sneh, let me turn to you. You are doing more foundational research and investigation on these tumors, and I think you're focusing on NF1. Can you tell us what is NF1 and what's the focus of your work? Sneh Patel Yes. So NF1, which is neurofibromatosis type 1, is a cancer predisposition syndrome that affects about one in 3,000 to one in 5,000 children in the U.S. And it is a disease that is caused due to a dysfunction of this gene called NF1 that leads to the overactivation of this specific pathway that causes these solid tumors to grow. NF1 has been characterized by a spectrum of benign tumors to the really aggressive malignant peripheral nerve chief tumors, MPNST, which are the highly aggressive sarcomas, which have really low survival rates. Dr. Gross and Dr. Widemann are experts in NF1 along with the team that we have here at the NIH, but it's a disease that we've been working on and I've been doing some clinical research to understand the spectrum of these tumors and understand the clinical indications of malignant transformation and how we can risk assess and intervene at certain stages to prevent the disease to progress into the malignant form. Oliver Bogler So when a patient presents with NF1 or when you have, maybe they have knowledge about their genetic inheritance, right? And so maybe they know their risk. I guess what you're saying is one of the questions is how will this individual patient progress or what will be their fate, so to speak? And that's what you're trying to understand to how you can more accurately predict it. Did I understand that correctly? Sneh Patel Yes, I think the main question, the fundamental question in the NF space is to risk assess and determine which lesions are going to turn malignant. And that's a very difficult thing to do because of a multitude of reasons. But correct, that is something that we're trying to understand more from the biology to the clinical phenotypes that we see. Oliver Bogler So how does that NF1 work fit into the bigger mission of the branch? I think there's a general emphasis, right, Brigitte, on predisposition syndromes and similar things. Brigitte Widemann Yeah, so we try to, at least that's how I look at it, we would not want to do things that are done at the outside. We would not want to reduplicate and we couldn't, you know, trials for newly diagnosed leukemia patients where there's standard therapy. We try to focus, I think, very much in line with the mission of the CCR to solve problems that are neglected, they have an unmet need, where we can make a difference. So that would include genetic tumor predisposition. And in particular, I think because these patients need follow up over time. And that's one thing we can do so well at the NIH with natural history studies, where we indeed, like we have followed patients, I've been here so long for 20 plus years. I've seen them when they were three years old and when they've become young adults. And I've seen a number of patients where the benign tumor very quickly turned to malignant tumor. And that's devastating to see. So for us being able to follow, like with longitudinal volumetric MRI and things that would be very expensive at the outside, there would be no clinical indication. And there's no grant that gives you 20 years to study something. I think we have to really look at how can we use the resources that we have to advance and so genetic tumor predisposition is one example. Oliver Bogler So I know that you're also a founding member of the NCI's Rare Tumor Initiative and co -leader on the Cancer Moonshot that was funded for pediatric and adult tumor, the My Pediatric and Adult Rare Tumor Network, MyPART. Can you tell us about that initiative and how that fits into the bigger picture? Brigitte Widemann Yeah, it kind of a lot of what we learned with NF1 getting after really hard work to the success learning that yes, we can understand the natural history, this helps in drug approval. In finding the first medical treatment for these tumors, we thought we have to expand this to other rare tumors. And so we developed the natural history study for other rare tumors and have built some impressive cohorts with Dr. Wedekind in chordoma and Dr. Del Rivero in adrenocortal carcinoma. I firmly believe you need champions. Like it takes a lot of work to do NF1 alone. So the more champions we can have, the better. And a new effort that we're currently working on with the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative is to develop a national study where hopefully there are multiple national champions that take on the more than 200 rare cancers that we have so that we can make more progress. Oliver Bogler Right, you mentioned the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative, which is another big initiative. Brigitte Widemann Yes, yeah, it's to provide like the foundational infrastructure needed so that this can actually be meaningfully studied and we don't redevelop natural history studies for every, every single tumor. Yeah. Oliver Bogler So, Andrea, I know that part of the MyPART is also patients and advocacy groups. I wonder if you could comment on their role in the work that you're doing. Andrea Gross Patients and advocacy groups are just an essential part of everything that we do in POB and in MyPART and in all of our work. I work particularly with the NF community and the patient advocates are an integral part of every step of the way. We work closely with them when we're in the design phase of trials. I'm part of a group where we work with patient representatives who help us design endpoints and determine what is meaningful for them, right? Because if you're going to design a clinical trial and you want to measure something, you want to make sure that the thing you're measuring is meaningful to the patient, right? Obviously, tumor shrinkage is an easy one, but what if you're trying to measure and see if the pain improves or if overall quality of life improves? Well, what measures are you going to use and are they asking the right questions? And so getting the patients involved in the process early on in research has been hugely important in our rare disease community because these patients and their families are really the experts about these rare diseases, right? They are the ones who are living it and experiencing it and we are learning from them constantly. Oliver Bogler Yeah, and I imagine that in the realm of pediatric cancers, there is a very strong advocacy community. I mean, nobody wants to see anybody with cancer, but seeing a kid with cancer is many, many times worse. And of course, their parents, I'm sure, and their families are engaged, right? Andrea Gross Absolutely, absolutely. And I will say, pediatric cancer in general, because all pediatric cancers are rare, but especially in some of these rare disease communities, I think there's just a tight network of patients and families, because again, they end up having to be the experts in many cases. If you have a physician in the community who sees one case of something in their entire career, those patients and those families really end up having to advocate and learn about their condition and are such a valuable resource for us as we're trying to learn about how we can help them. Oliver Bogler So Sneh, as I'm going to say, the newest member of the pediatric oncology field in this conversation today, I wonder what your perspective is on the biggest needs and areas of investigation? Sneh Patel Yes, as you mentioned, so I recently joined the pediatric oncology branch and I've been very fortunate to work under the mentorship of Dr. Widemann and Dr. Gross. And I think I've been very fortunate to be exposed to the research and the clinical side of things and how they're combined here at the Clinical Center. And so I think to answer the question, one of the biggest needs that I've seen, I guess would be the CCDI initiative that you mentioned about the data pulling and working and collaborating with other institutions to increase the number of samples that we have and the data that we have on these patients. We've already mentioned the point about these being really rare diseases. And I think for a lot of the analyses and experiments that we try to do, we sometimes don't have the statistical power or just enough numbers to draw meaningful conclusions and inferences. And I think these different data initiatives and different institutions coming together has been a huge need that I've seen. And the collaboration in the pediatric oncology space in general has been very inspiring. Oliver Bogler Brigitte, the same question to you, given the unique sort of perspective that you've described for intramural research at NCI. Where do you think that the Pediatric Oncology Branch should be, let's say in five years, where are you focusing your energies? Brigitte Widemann I want to see progress in some of the tumors that I have not had progress in before I retire, ideally, but like MPNST, I think we're getting close. Oliver Bogler Sorry, can you expand that acronym for us? Brigitte Widemann Malignant peripheral nerve sheat tumor, these are these very aggressive sarcomas. We've done multiple clinical trials and patients typically do not respond. It's extremely, extremely rare. But I do think we're learning more about the biology and I believe we're getting closer. We're also getting closer at potential prevention strategies. I think one thing that I would like to mention is the cell-free DNA efforts. Like Andrea mentioned, we can't do biopsies easily. It's just, and in kids, it's really hard. But, you know, Dr. Shern in our group with Dr. Sundby they have pioneered for NF1 cell -free DNA. So from a regular blood sample, they can now distinguish benign pre-malignant, malignant tumors. And we currently do in patients at risk, we do MRIs every six months, but it may still escape us. So this is a technology that I think will revolutionize how we can monitor not only NF1, but other tumors. And I hope this will inform our solid tumor clinical trials. And then the other area, you know, that I think we will hopefully make a lot of progress is by not only targeting the tumor cell, but the tumor microenvironment. And we have researchers here in the POB, Dr. Kaplan, Dr. McEachron, who look at the microenvironment that is immune-suppressive. How can we make the microenvironment more active that tumors can be, you know, treated effectively? There's a lot more work, but I really do think within the next five to 10 years, we will make breakthroughs in solid tumors. It may not be cures directly, but I think getting deep remissions for some time at least, that's what I want to see. Oliver Bogler That's fantastic. Sounds like a really exciting time to join this field. And we're going to take a quick break.... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/30667208

Engineering a Cancer Career 03/21/2024

Black in Cancer: Lifting As We Climb 03/07/2024

Black in Cancer: Lifting As We Climb In this episode, Dr. Chanelle Case Borden, an Associate Director of Training Programs in the NCI Center for Cancer Training, Office of Training and Education, interviews Ms. Sigourney Bonner, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and CEO of Black in Cancer. They discuss the mission of Black in Cancer, which aims to increase the number of Black cancer researchers, provide visibility for them, and bring awareness about cancer to the community. Ms. Bonner emphasize the global impact of Black in Cancer, highlighting that the organization is not limited to the UK or US. The upcoming Black in Cancer Conference is discussed, along with opportunities for individuals to get involved with the organization. Ms. Bonner shares her career journey, interest in science, experience in industry, and much more. Show Notes: Ad:   Your Turn Recommendations:   TRANSCRIPT [MUSIC] Oliver Bogler: Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers. Before we get to the episode – a quick announcement. In the conversation between my colleague Chanelle Case Borden and our guest Sigourney Bonner you will hear about the Black in Cancer Conference which will be held at NIH in June 2024. At the time we recorded the interview a couple of weeks ago, the registration for this in-person event was still open, but in the meantime due to overwhelming support, it is at capacity and registration is now closed. You can join the waitlist – find the link on the Black in Cancer website. Now, let’s listen to the interview. Chanelle Case Borden: Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we will explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I am your host, Chanelle Case Borden from NCI Center for Cancer Training. Today we are talking to Sigourney Bonner, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and CEO of Black in Cancer. Listen through the end of the show to hear our guests make an interesting recommendation and where we invite you to take your turn. Sigourney, for those listeners who may be unfamiliar with the organization, can you tell us a little bit more about Black in Cancer? Sigourney Bonner: Sure. So we started in the summer of 2020 as a result of a number of things, but we don't have to mention that there was lots of social justice movement during that time. But really it was an opportunity to bring together community. So when I started my PhD, I didn't know anybody who was a Black woman who'd done a PhD. And that visibility piece was really important to me. So in the midst of that, I was looking for community. I found my co-founder via Twitter and we connected and just had a really big chat about what it meant to be Black and a cancer researcher and kind of found that it was twofold. So there was the visibility piece in finding it difficult to find people to aspire to. But on the other side, it was being this font of knowledge for our community and having, you know, our parents or our friends be like, “oh, my uncle's brother's sister's got breast cancer. What should I do?” And I'm like, “I don't know. I work in children's brain tumors”. So wanting to bring a community together that meant I did have the resource to be able to point them in the right direction and give them the right information. I really, that's what we do. So we're twofold increasing the number of Black cancer researchers and providing them visibility, but also bringing awareness about cancer to the community so they can be informed and empowered about their healthcare decisions. Chanelle Case Borden: That's wonderful. I remember being in a very similar position myself. So my inspiration and wanting to be a PhD scientist was actually as a result of two white women, which is excellent mentorship. I thank them, I think that I had them in my life. But to your point, there was no one that looked like me that I could really point to. And I think things might have gone a little bit differently if I had that resource. So I think having an organization like Black Cancer is a wonderful resource for scientists going through their journeys now. So can you talk a little bit more about the UK and US connection? I think some people think that it's only in the UK. So can you tell us a little bit about how that works? So its really an international organization. Sigourney Bonner: Yeah, so we've always, I guess, wanted to make sure that we could spread the information as widely as possible. When we started, my co-founder, Henry, actually was a postdoc at Vanderbilt, and we were just talking about how similar experiences we had, you know, being different genders and across an ocean. And it was therefore a global issue. So we didn't want to start in one place and assume that all of the issues only occurred in one place. We speak so much and there's so much known about disparities, particularly when it comes to cancer within the US. But actually we don't talk about it a lot in the UK. And there's an assumption that because we have a national health service that it's equitable care. And actually a lot of work coming out is saying that that's not the case. So what we wanted to do is to continue to highlight that as a global issue and not just as a one place or another issue because they're things that we can cross-link and do in both places that will impact both communities. So yeah, that was what we really wanted to do. So we've been growing. We've had, so most of our programs occur across the US and the UK, but actually people who've come to our conference, as well as people who connect with us, people who work as part of our board of directors and our volunteers, are very international. So Canadians, people from the Netherlands, from across a number of African nations. We've had people connect with us from Australia and Brazil. It's really, really broad and shows that these issues of visibility or whether that's information about cancer that it's not just limited, it's really a global issue. Chanelle Case Borden: I’m surprised but at the same time not surprised. Yeah, so speaking about the conference, there is a Black in Cancer Conference happening and it's happening right here at the National Institutes of Health this summer. So will you tell us a little bit more about what attendees can expect if they choose to participate? Sigourney Bonner: Yeah, sure. So what we wanted to do was we had a conference last in October of 2022, and we wanted to continue that work. But, you know, our next step is always how can we do it bigger? How can we do it better? So our next step was to see if we could move it to the US because we didn't want it to just be a UK thing and have this incredible collaboration with the Frederick National Lab and working with NCI, which is absolutely incredible. So what we've really been doing the last few months, actually over the last year has been putting together this program of incredible researchers who were doing brilliant work in a number of different areas, but who are really pushing innovation and the forefronts of science for cancer patients. But we also never want to forget those that we're working for. So we also have patient advocates involved in what we do and they'll be speaking at the conference about their experiences. So, pushing for more research within particular areas that particularly impact Black communities, whether that's thinking about things like triple negative breast cancer and the difference in diagnosis rates with those from the Black women and that community. So really just pulling together all of these incredible researchers, allowing them to network and really providing a space where no one can say. “Oh, well, I didn't think that there was anybody who was Black, who was in this space. Otherwise, we would have brought them in for this panel or we would have invited them for this interview” or whatever it's like. They're here. They're thriving. They're doing brilliantly. We're providing visibility for them and really just a space where they can feel a sense of belonging more than anything. Chanelle Case Borden: Yeah, that's amazing. I think that awareness is really key and I'm actually really looking forward to being in a room like that. So are there other opportunities for folks who might be interested in Black in Cancer to get involved, maybe for the conference, but maybe just for the organization itself? Sigourney Bonner: Yeah, absolutely. So there is room for everyone. We have more things to do than we have hands being able to do them. So I guess this is a moment where I really want to shout out to our board and our volunteers, because all of this stuff that you see happening is actually from a really small set of really, really dedicated people who all have full-time jobs. So whether they are early career researchers, just starting academic careers or just starting industry careers or PhDs like I am, or working in their outside of work hours, which as many people know, PhD hours don't really exist anyway. Chanelle Case Borden: Not at all. Sigourney Bonner: So, are doing all of that incredible work to keep the organization moving, to keep our mentorship program going, to support our PhD students that are now in their second year and we've got another cohort starting. So yeah, just a huge shout out to them. And also we've just got so much more space, there’s so much we wanna do. We wanna grow our community impact work and making sure that people can be informed, but we need more people to be able to do that. We're a small team, but we want people in the spaces where these communities are to give that information, to answer the questions because that's how we, that's how we start to reduce disparities in the best way that we can on the ground. Chanelle Case Borden: Right, so that is through your two programs. So it's the Black and Cancer Pipeline Program and the Cancer Awareness Project. So do you want to tell us a little bit more about those? Sigourney Bonner: Yeah, sure. So, the pipeline program aims to support basically from undergrad all the way up. So, we have a mentorship program for undergraduates, both in the US and the UK. We have now had 80 students come through our program over the last three years who have gone on to do incredible things, whether masters, PhDs, gone into industry. And we're just incredibly proud of the work that they're doing. And some of them are still investing and pouring into the organization and volunteering. And so that's been really great. We have a collaboration with Cancer Research UK with their Black Leaders in Cancer Scholarship Program. So, we're supporting currently four students who started their PhD in October and bringing on another two this year. At the postdoc level, we have our postdoctoral fellowship awards. So those are $75,000 a year for three years for postdocs to continue their work. If they transition into a tenure track position in that time, it goes up to $100,000. And we'll be announcing this year's awardees at the conference, which we're really excited about. We also have Brilliant Young Investigator awards for those who have just started labs. So, we have announcing another one of those this year, and then our distinguished investigator award, which we gave out three years ago which went to Dr. Paula Hammond, who's now on the White House science advisory council and all of these things, so it's really brilliant. So that's how we are kind of supporting the pipeline all the way through on that side. But then on the other side, we really have been trying to just engage the community as much as we can, whether that's seminars, outreach, collaborating with other organizations and getting people tested. Whether that's prostate tests, et cetera, encouraging people to go for screenings. So we've done some really exciting work around that. And our seminar series worked incredibly. We tried to bring together the whole other cancer journey in that. So we'll have a patient who will talk about their personal experience. We'll have a clinician who talks about kind of the practicalities of what that looks like. And then somebody who is either a survivor, who is on the other side of that journey and who could just say like, this is me on the other side. I'm thriving. I'm doing great. This doesn't have to be a death sentence. So yeah, the programs coming together, they're still growing and moving. And yeah, we're just, our hope is always that people are impacted and that if we can help to change, save one life, that's enough. Chanelle Case Borden: Yes, I definitely agree with that. So if folks are interested, they would be able to just go to the Black in Cancer website to volunteer. Sigourney Bonner: Yeah, yeah, there should be like a little volunteer tab. But either way, just drop us an email. Or if you would like, I want to reach out via Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, however you want reach us, we're here and ready to bring you on board. Chanelle Case Borden: Excellent, excellent. Okay, well, it's time for a short break and when we come back, we'll talk to Sigourney about her career path, her science and her future plans. [music starts] Oliver Bogler: PubMed lists over 270,000 cancer papers published in 2022 – that is a staggering 750 papers every day. It’s great that cancer research is such an active field, but it makes finding the pubs that are critical to your work a challenge. What if you had an AI that paid attention to the papers you read and suggested others as they appear in PubMed? That is exactly what the NCI is building with an app called NanCI. With me to discuss NanCI are two members of the team that are creating NanCI. Duncan Anderson: NanCI  is an app for cancer scientists and it helps them to discover the research in new ways and connect with each other and build their personal networks and share information and get to know each other. We've just launched the ability to actually chat with a piece of research, so you can actually have a conversation and ask questions about a research paper itself. JD Wuarin: Instead of having to read the whole paper yourself, you can now simply ask questions and NanCI will answer those questions. One of the cool features we've also added is that it will read the abstract and figure out what questions you might want to ask the paper. Duncan Anderson: We're using artificial intelligence within NanCI to help to make information easier to find and easier to understand and easier to interact with. The only information we're using is the scientific data. So the research paper, for example, we don't allow our AI to go off and answer random questions that might introduce all sorts of concerns. JD Wuarin: And so the idea will be that eventually with NanCI straight from your pocket, you'll not only be able to chat with papers and understand what papers are about, but also based on your interest, it will suggest to you what you might want to investigate, maybe which gene mutation you might want to look at, which new disease might be related to what you're doing. And that's gonna be interesting, I think.  Duncan Anderson: If you start working in a field which you don't have a lot of experience in, it can be a bit daunting. There's a lot of information to read. We have this idea that you could tell NanCI what the field is and NanCI would go off and present you the key influential papers in that space so you can very quickly get your head around what this new field is.  So today, NanCI  can be used by cancer researchers in the USA. So it's available from the Apple App Store for the iPhone. And there's a restriction on the downloads, which means that you need to have an email address associated with a cancer research institution. [music ends] Chanelle Case Borden: And we're back. So now we're going to start to get to know Sigourney a little bit better. And to first start out that career journey conversation, we're going to talk about how you first got interested in science. So you want to share some details about that? Sigourney Bonner: Sure. So I guess my interest in science was kind of in, mainly in high school. I think I'd always been like kind of interested in science, but I wasn't the kid who had like the science kit and the microscope and was like digging for worms in the garden and looking at like, I would, that wasn't me. Chanelle Case Borden: Oh, you weren't like me then. Okay, got it. Sigourney Bonner: I was the classic, like I want to be a pop star or an air hostess type vibes, like that was me. So yeah, I guess I, as I kind of went through high school, I was like, actually, I'm pretty, I'm okay at science. And I'd been thinking about like, you know, what I wanted to do. And originally I wanted to be a medic. So I was like, yeah, okay, this is a good path to go down. And then when it got to like my final year, so in the UK, you take A levels, which help you to get into university. And I was that person that picked all three sciences, because I was like, I'm set. And then I actually missed my grades to get into med school, but it was the biggest blessing because it meant that I went to do physiology as my undergrad degree. And there I just, that was when I like really fell in love with like being in the lab and like getting to answer questions and like really like delving deeper into science where I didn't have to do the science I wasn't interested in either because I was a very people biology person. I had an opportunity to spend my time just throughout my kind of the second half of my first year of university in a lab, just getting to work on experiments and things in a neuroscience lab. And that was when I was like, wow, I sat in front of the microscope, I'd just done an experiment and I knew that nobody else knew the results but me. And I was like, this is so cool. I'm the first person in the world to do this. I was just there like secretly hoarding my science, but like, I was like, this is amazing. And that was the moment when I like, I really fell in love with it. And I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to be the first person to find this out. I want to be the one answering questions and figuring out what to do next. So it kind of just grew my passion and from there, it just kind of spiraled. So yeah, it was an unexpected path, but I'm really grateful that I get to do science every day now. Chanelle Case Borden: Yeah, that sounds really exciting. So you also spent some time in industry too. So after university, you went to industry, which is becoming an increasingly popular career choice. So can you tell us a little bit about your time there? And then also if you have any advice for early... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/30257143

A Global Outlook on Women, Power, and Cancer 02/15/2024

A Global Outlook on Women, Power, and Cancer In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, we hear from Dr. Ophira Ginsburg, Senior Scientific Officer and Senior Advisor for Clinical Research in NCI’s Center for Global Health. Dr. Ginsburg discusses the published article Women, power, and cancer: a Lancet Commission, which focuses on the social determinants of health and the power dynamics that affect women's access to cancer care. She shares the commission's key findings, which highlight the high incidence of cancer in women and the potential for prevention and early detection to save lives. Dr. Ginsburg gives her thoughts on the importance of women's leadership and representation in cancer care and provides recommendations for creating a gender-equitable cancer care system. She then discusses her career path and offers advice for those interested in pursuing a career in global oncology. Show Notes: Ad: Your Turn Recommendations: Book: Podcast: TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler. I work at the NCI in the Center for Cancer Training. On Inside Cancer Careers, we explore all the different ways that people join the fight against disease and we hear their stories. Today, we're talking with Dr. Ophira Ginsburg, Senior Advisor for Clinical Research in NCI Center for Global Health and leader of a recent Lancet Commission on Women, Power and Cancer. Listen through to the end of the show to hear her make some interesting recommendations and where we will invite you to take your turn. Dr. Ginsburg, Ophira, welcome. Ophira Ginsburg Thank you so much. Oliver Bogler So you've done a lot of things in global health, but I wanna start with one particular recent initiative that you led, which is this commission for the medical journal Lancet. And the commission was called on Women, Power and Cancer. It sounds like a lot more than simply looking at the incidence of cancer in women, for example. Why “power”? Ophira Ginsburg Yeah, it's a great question. And thanks so much for having me on the show. I guess I'll start by setting it up with a previous series we did in the Lancet. It was a three-part article, mostly reviews, with some recommendations called Health, Equity, and Women's Cancers, which I had the good fortune to lead with a 40, a compliment, 40 authors from 18 countries. We published online in 2016, in print 2017, when I was at WHO, actually, as a medical officer. Circle back to that if it's of interest. At that time we focused just on breast and cervical cancer, and we did try to dig in a little bit into the social determinants of health that we all thought were influencing, and of course there's enough evidence, there's more than enough evidence to support that we have much more to do to close this gap and reduce cancer health disparities for women at the national level and of course at the global level. Several years later we hadn't really progressed as far as we had hoped to. And I had a conversation with Richard Horton, as you know, the editor-in-chief of The Lancet in London 2019 just before the pandemic hit, and he asked me what did I think of progress. And I could say something about the emerging efforts on breast cancer, now part of the global breast cancer initiative at WHO and cervical cancer, of course, the elimination strategy that many of your listeners, I hope, are aware of. But we really still hadn't cracked through that barrier, that global barrier that seems to affect women in every setting and not just with respect to access to care, access to prevention when it comes to cervical cancer, let's say girls getting vaccinated and women getting screened, et cetera. So we kind of stepped back and looked at what is the big picture here? And if I might just draw on my own career point, when I was doing more hands-on global health work, I co-founded a small breast clinic, breast cancer center in rural Bangladesh, and women were coming in with these large, fungating masses, for those who are clinicians, you'll know what I mean, for those who aren't, just desperate situation of terribly advanced cancer, the likes of which you see maybe once a year or never really. This was sort of the norm. And we started asking these women, and I was working with qualitative researchers, why did you come so late? First of all, it's a really loaded question, right? It places the blame on the woman. And also without asking, we really made wrong assumptions. So understanding the power dynamics within their families and within society led them to say to us “We're making a choice. I can't make this choice. I have no choice but to have used the little bit of money I had to spend on school books and uniforms for the kids”. “I'm not the person who decides on my own healthcare”, they would say in some other way, which is typical in that particular setting in the South Asian conservative community, that it's the mothers-in-law and mostly the husbands, fear of being ostracized, fear … anyway. I'm going on and on, but to say the element of power dynamics and patriarchal systems as they pertain to opportunities for equitable, high-quality, respectful care for people with cancer as well as other elements we can talk about really spoke to me. And when we started the commission, the concept note I wrote and shared with Richard Horton and then to the editorial board, there's a process for how these commissions come about. And then eventually started inviting people to join me - we saw that power was really central. And the name of the report eventually became not Women and Cancer, but ‘Women, Power and Cancer’. That by the way is inclusive of women as healthcare providers, as well as people with lived experience of cancer. Oliver Bogler So would you then say that power is a new social determinant of health? Is that a fair comment? Ophira Ginsburg You know, that's a terrific question. And I think you're the first person to ask me this. All the interviews we've had since the report came out. I don't know that we're inventing it. It certainly is an element that is discussed in other domains, but I haven't seen it, what's the word I'm looking for? Oliver Bogler Explicitly called out or… Ophira Ginsburg Yeah, I haven't seen it really framed in terms of cancer with one exception. And I should mention her. When we did the series, there were a couple of commentaries. One was by our colleagues at the American Cancer Society. This was the series, Health Equity in Women's Cancers that I referred to. And the other was by then president of Chile, Dr. Michelle Bachelet, co-founder of UN Women, who went on the next year after that to become the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She wrote an editorial about our series and she called it . So there you go. We can't own it. That's the great legendary former president, Dr. Bachelet. Oliver Bogler So what are the key findings that you published in this commission report? Ophira Ginsburg Right, so first what we set out to do was to look at power in three domains, in knowledge, decision making, and economics. So we had our working groups. The first working group really was the one I was attached to as a scientist working with our colleagues at IARC and others on the burden. So one of the main quantitative findings was that cancer ranks in the top three causes of premature mortality - death under 70 - for women in every country except two. That's out of 185 countries. It's rather mystifying that more people don't know this and in fact we weren't really aware the degree to which cancer ranks in that few top causes of death under the age of 70 and so what does that mean for the society, what does that mean for the children of these mothers etc. especially when they when they die, when they still have young children. So that was a key point. And when we broke it down by country, we saw there were huge differences depending on where you lived, the degree to which cancer deaths are premature, right? Largely because population structure and other factors, but also different types of cancer that are more or less prevalent according to geography and also income level and what's called the Human Development Index. And so the other thing we broke down was of the 2.3 million women who died in 2020 prematurely of cancer, 1.3 million women's lives could have been saved if they had appropriate access to what we already know works in terms of prevention and early detection. And another 800,000 women could have been spared death prematurely under the age of 70 if every woman diagnosed with cancer of any kind, right? All taken together had access to the optimal care. These are really important data points. That's just a couple of the quantitative findings. I'll stop there for a second. Oliver Bogler Yeah, that's fascinating. So I mean, the problems you're describing seem, to someone like myself who's not in global health, quite overwhelming. You know, the infrastructure, the socioeconomic circumstances. So does the report also have ideas on how these challenges can be tackled? Ophira Ginsburg Absolutely. So the point of these reports is not just to highlight a problem, which would be horribly depressing for all of us. And I mean, there's enough other ways to express and analyze and publish on such a paper. You know, many papers could have come out of this work. But to do this as a commission meant that what we were tasked with was coming up with a set of evidence-informed, evidence-based recommendations, and specific enough that they could then be advanced, which is what we're working on now. We started actually about a year ago to look at what we call in public health policy, monitoring and evaluation. How are we going to see that these recommendations can be actioned? And who are we aiming this for? How can we help them develop a set of, let's say, metrics? Are there baseline data, baseline statistics? Doesn't have to be that we as a commission come up with these. I'll give you an example. We know that breastfeeding is an important contributor to reducing the risk of breast cancer. It's underutilized as a prevention strategy. Of course, there's other really good reasons for people to breastfeed if they're able. But what are the upstream factors that determine whether a woman or whoever is available to be able to breastfeed their child can do that? Also has to do with policy around, right, a private space, etc. The rights and enablers enabling factors to be able to breastfeed. So do we have to make up that data? No, there's a whole global breast cancer observatory. There's a lot of global health data out there of great quality from World Health Organization and other partners. And so tapping into those was key. Another one would be looking at the existing laws like the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which is one of the few legally binding health-related treaties globally. There are gender responsive policies around tobacco, such as the targeted marketing, what's called pink washing, that was very effective in the 1950s and onwards, you know, tripled the number of women who were taking up tobacco smoking because of that very cynical marketing, which by the way, you know, abused concepts of feminism and empowerment to encourage women to smoke as a sign that they've made it, that they're successful. We're seeing the same thing with alcohol. So,there's a set of 10 recommendations we encourage people to look at. And there's a table at the back of the report that gives just one example for each of those where we say, who is this aimed at? Is it multilateral, like UN organizations? Is it for countries to do, subnational governments, civil society, the private sector? And guess what? Research funders like us at the NIH and the National Cancer Institute. Some of these recommendations are aimed at several of these. And then we just took one example for each of the recommendations to give people a chance to sort of hang their hat on that, think about it, and then help move the needle forward individually and on behalf of their organization. Oliver Bogler So you've already mentioned one dimension, if you will, of power, the example you gave of a woman in Bangladesh not being able to maybe determine her own health care future or pathway. Another element that you, I think, point to in the report is that of leadership and representation, and also, of course, in cancer health care and also in cancer research. So I'm curious, why is that important? And how can we do better? Ophira Ginsburg Yeah, that's particularly important for us to think about here at the NCI. And I would say that we are on the leading edge, I think, of improving that situation for women as leaders. As we can see now, we have a woman as a leader of the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute. But by and large, historically women have been underrepresented in pretty much everywhere in terms of research funding organizations. We took a look at a couple of parts of this. We looked at the editors in chief in the top 100 cancer journals by sex. And we found that only 16% of editors-in-chief in those top 100 journals were actually female, which is kind of shocking. We thought it would be maybe a third. So that's a low-hanging fruit, by the way, that we're gonna push the editors-in-chief, we've had discussions with Elsevier or with The Lancet, and they are discussing with their publishers. The Lancet actually does well, but many journals do not. So that's one aspect. Another is looking at the principle investigators on research grants by sex and ideally by gender as well as other domains such as race. We haven't really done enough, I think, in this regard globally or even nationally in the US to help ensure that equity is achieved if it hasn't already occurred in every domain of health, including cancer. So there's a lot we can do. I mean, you obviously lead all these training initiatives, the whole division at the NCI. There are ways to help give a leg up in terms of unique opportunities for women, mentorship and other scholarships. On the global scale, a number of our partners like ASCO, AACR and others have been offering specific scholarships for additional training for women in low and middle income countries. As a scientist, I know AACR also has that. So these are really doable things and we need to act and we need to measure and hold ourselves accountable for how we're doing in a short period of time. There's a lot that could be achieved in that regard. Now why is it important? I think our listeners probably know this, but women are more likely to come for care, to stay throughout their health care course, especially for women with breast or gynecologic cancer, if they have gender concordant care. We've seen this in many different countries. It's not just in South Asia, for example, or in African countries. There's a certain degree of stigma, taboo, and disrespect, really disrespectful care, including for women of color in this country, in the US. So there's, you know, representation matters. And I think enough said on that topic. Oliver Bogler No, that's really important. You've mentioned this really important aspect. Are there other things that we could do maybe that are also in your report in order to create a more gender-equitable cancer care system here and across the world? Ophira Ginsburg Absolutely. In our healthcare workforce group, we had actually the workforce group and also the team of scientists on the commission who looked at with a deep dive into the literature, the health systems across countries, across cancer types, especially looking at non-sex specific cancers like lung cancer and colorectal cancer. We really wanted to take a deeper dive into those two as an example of where things might be problematic. We didn't know what we'd find. We found a lot of problems. Women were more likely to present with an emergency presentation of colorectal cancer in a number of countries. So together with the workforce group, we present in the report a template for what we call a gender competency framework that could be adapted, evolved in different settings to make it culturally appropriate, etc. that is not only about gender, but again, intersectionality, inclusive of people of diverse gender orientation, gender expression, sexual orientation, et cetera. And we'd like to see that taken forward by the big cancer societies, as well as health systems throughout the US and elsewhere. Oliver Bogler So I think you're coming up on your second anniversary of having joined the NCI. Why did you come to the NCI? What are you hoping to achieve in your current role? Ophira Ginsburg Well, I'm thrilled to be at the NCI. I still am pinching myself. First, for people who don't know, I'm a Canadian national, hoping to become a US citizen very soon. And the idea of working with such incredible people, really dedicated to the best science and to be of service nationally and globally. And particularly working at the Center for Global Health, I was very fortunate to have, well, leadership, as you know, Dr. Satish Gopal, to give me the time I needed to complete this big report of the Lancet Commission and start to take the recommendations forward as part of my work. One of the other priorities that I have is to help advance a new programmatic area to advance capacity building for cancer therapeutic clinical trials in low and middle income countries, which is very exciting and timely. Also goes along with the equity principles that are so close to our hearts. Oliver Bogler Fantastic. We're going to take a short break now. And when we come back, we'll hear all about Dr. Ginsburg's career path and what advice she has for our listeners. [music] Alexandra Richardson Have you ever thought about harnessing the power of data science in your cancer research, but aren't sure where to start? The good news is that you can take a step toward unlocking the potential of data science with the National Cancer Institute's new Cancer Data Science Training, your gateway to free online training and resources to help you learn how to work with big data and deal with big data problems in cancer research. Go to datascience.cancer.gov/training and there you can take the Data Science 101 video course to learn the basics about data science skills such as coding, machine learning, biostatistics, and more. Or explore the Cancer Data Science project lifecycle where you'll learn how to start your own projects and see where you fit in as a cancer researcher. NCI experts wrote six basic guides with tips you can apply to your own research. Or explore the training guide library, your easy access toolbox of resources for cancer data methods, tools, and technologies. Use it to get quick answers on identifying and gathering data, predictive modeling, data visualization, and more. Data science is accelerating discovery in cancer research. Head to datascience.cancer.gov/training and be a part of it today. [music] Oliver Bogler And we're back. I'd like to turn to your career path now. Let's start at the beginning. What got you interested in science? Ophira Ginsburg Oh wow, I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in science. And apparently, supposedly, when I was six, the first time somebody remembers anyway, asking, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, a zoologist. I wanted to be Jane Goodall or, you know, Diane Fossey. I was absolutely mad about animals. And funnily enough, now if I could retrain, I would be a marine biologist. But… yeah, so I've always been fascinated by genetics. I... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/29957393

Fireside Chat with Dr. W. Kimryn Rathmell 02/01/2024

Fireside Chat with Dr. W. Kimryn Rathmell In this episode, we talk to Dr. W. Kimryn Rathmell, NCI’s new director, who was recorded live at the NCI Transition Career Development Workshop. Dr. Rathmell shared her career journey and the importance of supporting the next generation of cancer researchers. She shares valuable insights on topics such as diversifying the cancer research workforce, the National Cancer Plan, leading NCI, Princess Dave, and much more. Ad: TRANSCRIPT S2-03 Fireside Chat with Dr. W. Kimryn Rathmell Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI's Center for Cancer Training. Today, we have a very special episode for you - a conversation with our new NCI Director, Dr. Kimryn Rathmell. My colleague Dr. Nas Zahir, Director of the Cancer Training Branch and I chatted with Dr. Rathmell at the recent Transition Career Development Workshop which Nas and her team held in January. Let’s listen. Nas Zahir It's really a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you, Dr. Rathmell. You are now the 17th, NCI director, and you became the 17th director in December. So congratulations. And thank you for joining us today. Kimryn Rathmell Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Nas Zahir So we have so many great questions that I'm sure listeners will appreciate your perspective on. To kick us off with a bit of introduction. Can you please tell us a little bit about your background? Kimryn Rathmell Sure. You know, reflecting on a question like that is is always interesting, and how do you land as the director of the NCI right? So, so my background is that I'm a physician scientist, I'm a medical oncologist. I have a PhD in biophysics, my laboratory does cancer biology, we're molecular biologists, and we're interested in everything from molecules in cancer cells that that drive tumorigenesis to the interactions of those cells, with the rest of the host, and how you might target that therapeutically. So you know, I've been working in that space for 20, 30 years, and have had the experience of doing a lot of training. So this is a great place for me to be kind of getting my feet wet here, but also running clinical trials, being a part of The Cancer Genome Atlas, doing some drug development, the NExT program, so a lot of different parts that have interacted with the NCI. And then as well, I've had a lot of years as an administrator. So put it all together. And this is sort of the perfect uniting job for me. Nas Zahir So I know, it's only been a few weeks, but what has it been like to join NCI so far? You know, as the director of NCI is reality versus what your expectations were? Kimryn Rathmell Oh, well, so it's thrilling, and it has exceeded all expectations. So, you know, I came into this because I thought it would be thrilling and it has been even more so. The people here are fantastic. The mission is just irreproachable, and the opportunities to to impact cancer from so many different directions. You know, it's, it's, I feel like a kid in a candy shop here. So I'm having really a great time. Oliver Bogler My thanks, also Dr. Rathmell, for joining us at this Transition Career Development Workshop. We invited our workshop attendees to send in some questions. And I'd like to ask you one of those now, what measures is the NCI taking to ensure a diversity in perspective and experience among our community of NCI funded cancer investigators, and I'm thinking both those across the country that we support with the kind of mechanisms we've been talking about in this workshop, but also those in our intramural research program. Kimryn Rathmell Yeah, it's it's a big initiative across the whole spectrum. You know, first, I've been really impressed by some of my early briefings. This is this has been a topic that has come up several times initiatives that develop our training pipeline that develop our trainees to be really exceptional in whichever direction that they want to go scientifically, and our diverse recruiting practices and the curriculum and career development that exists for people who are on the staff or are in the tenured part of the NCI. That's true outside as well, you know, there, there are some tremendous programs that are NIH wide. Back when I was at Vanderbilt, I was privileged to be a part of the FIRST, we call it V-FIRST, because at Vanderbilt, everything starts with a V. The FIRST program, which is a cohort hiring program to bring diverse investigators together, so they have a peer, automatic peer group as well as institutional support. And, you know, we we worked at Vanderbilt to increase our diversity of both investigators as well as providers and staff and educators, year over year, so, and I know that that's not unique there. I think having a diverse workforce gives different perspectives. It's something that everyone recognizes brings more balance to anything that we want to do. Nas Zahir Dr. Rathmell, how did you get interested in science and medicine and cancer research? Could you share a little bit about the most important moments in your career trajectory? Kimryn Rathmell So early, my, my parents were teachers, so and my dad was a science teacher. So I was in kind of interested in science, I actually had an experience in high school, where... So I was in a very tiny, Iowa high school, and the chemistry and physics teacher, there was, you know, only one, and she was out on medical leave, and the substitute really couldn't couldn't manage it. And so two of us from the class were charged with coming over to her house learning lesson and teaching it and, and what might have been a burden actually really got me to realize how much I loved science. So that, you know, that got me to, you know, college and science and you do college and science and you think about medical school. I also worked in a nursing home. That was, again, small town, Iowa, you know, you can work on the farm, and you can work in the nursing home. And, and I really enjoyed my work there working with patients. And so putting it all together, landed as a physician scientist. In terms of sort of the pivotal aha moments, I'll give you two, I think, one was in medical school. So I was an MD student, before I was an MD PhD student. And I was working in a laboratory and had one of those 'waiting for the data to come out' like bated breath, you know, anticipating, you know, I don't know which way this is going to go. And, you know, finding this just fascinating result. And that aha moment was when I knew I had the bug, and I had, I had to stay in research. And so that's what caused me to take a leave of absence, get a PhD. And stay on that path that has never stopped, I still get a huge charge, when I go into the laboratory and someone wants to show me a western blot or, you know, a new plot or, you know, some new piece of data, I still find that gives me very a lot of energy. But I get energy from patients too. And the other story that I'll that I'll tell you is, you know, there have been a number of very unique patient experiences that I've had in my career that have shaped me and in terms of, you know, how I think about medicine and how I think about the healthcare system in general or, or how I think about the science that underlies their biology. I could give you a lot of different patient stories, but I'll tell you, one that I recently told, and a little bit more detailed, to a different group. Some of you heard this, but a patient had a very rare tumor type. And young guy, young African American man from rural North Carolina, who had this very rare tumor - I'll keep the story very short - introduced me to one the extreme disparities are in healthcare, and what we at the more privileged sites can do about that. But two, I don't want to use opportunity, but the opportunity that there is in rare tumors to understand discrete biologies, that can actually change the trajectory for the people who have this weird tumor type but also to understand cancer biology that is more fundamental and that particular patient, their tumor and the the experience that I had getting involved in the community around that rare tumor type really changed the way I think about cancer. Oliver Bogler Dr. Rathmell, another question from our attendees. Federal agencies across the board are facing constraints in their budget, also impacts the NCI of course. Given this particular challenge, and at the same time, the great opportunities that cancer research presents us in this at this time, how do you intend to continue to fulfill the NCI mission? Kimryn Rathmell Yeah, I wish I wish there was more, more money to go around. But the thing I know is that we will work collaboratively, we will work across boundaries, the fiscal constraints will provide some opportunity for us to think about some things differently. There are a lot of different ways that we can do the work that we do. It's not a new issue, there's always been more ideas than there is money to do them all. So this, this will be a time where we have to just really think carefully about where we want to make our investments. And and I have to say, you know, I came here because of the opportunities. And I came here because it's a unique period of time, where the White House is so invested in cancer, and so much has our back. So I'm very grateful to the President, the First Lady and Congress who in spite of what appeared to be headwinds are very consistently supportive of cancer research and of the whole mission of the NCI. So I think that we have a huge amount of things that we can do, there's never been a better time to be in cancer research than there is today. Nas Zahir NIH among many other organizations is taking a close look at the postdoc as a career stage. Based on your experience as a postdoc, and having trained and mentored so many successful postdocs, including some who are now at NIH, what would you share with those who are on this career path, or those considering it or those who are current postdocs? Kimryn Rathmell Yeah, so I think you know, the postdoc period can be the best time, you know, in a, in a scientific career, I look back on my postdoc period, and really, truly loved that period of time. Having that freedom to really dive into a project and have that be your sole focus is, you know, luxury. And, and so I want to make sure I say that, because I think there can be some, you know, concerns about the challenges that exist with being a postdoc. I think that if people are looking for a secondary level of training beyond PhD, which is sort of the time to develop your own research, the postdoc is really perfect for that. And I think it's most important that you have a good mentor, and that you have a great relationship with, with that person to be able to talk with them scientifically, but also about the career trajectory that's happening during that time. The postdoc is a very short period of time to develop an identity as a scientist. And so having a good guide for that is really important. But the other thing that I would say about being a postdoc is to trust your gut, as far as what it's leading you to about what really gets you excited, you know, where your passions are, and not to be too thwarted by people giving you advice from outside. There are a lot of different ways to be happy and successful in, in cancer research. And, and I would, you know, find the way that makes you the most happy and and can make the biggest impact discoveries, because that really is where we achieve our mission. Oliver Bogler Another question from our audience and connected to what you were just saying. Not all postdocs are interested in leading independent research teams in an academic setting. I wonder what your thoughts are about paths that lead into careers in professional science, for example, like a staff scientist or into research in the private sector, or even into science-related careers that are not research based, such as journalism or policy or law. Kimryn Rathmell I think we need smart people doing all of those jobs, right. And when I look back at the postdocs who have come through my own group, it's a big mixture. Some run their own labs in academia, many are in industry jobs. others are in government. Some are writers, some are working in more of the clinical research space. I remember actually one aha moment that I had about, you know, where we need physician scientists, because I think physician scientists tend to do this pathway and they go to do, everybody does the same thing. We did a sabbatical, my husband was invited to be on sabbatical at Novartis in Switzerland, about 10 years ago. I was doing something different, but he was working at Novartis. And he was studying, you know, the drug development space and working with a remarkable number of physician scientists. And that's when I realized, wow, you know, this is really a perfect place for people who, you know, understand the disease, or health, biology, as well as the science behind it, and how to put it all together. So, you know, I think that there are just a lot of different ways that talented people can be able to contribute. And not one is particularly more, or less than the other, they're all really important. Oliver Bogler Given that, if I may follow up, now is the NCI director, what is the role of NCI then in supporting these multiple different kinds of pathways? Kimryn Rathmell Well, I mean, I think that all of them require mentorship, all require training attention. And, you know, I think that it's our job to help make those pathways clear where we can so and, you know, I saw just a bit of this before it before I started the podcast. This session has been very, you know, broadly based, and I think that the NCI already does do a really nice job of trying to help create a lot of different opportunities for people, and help make it clear where those opportunities might lie. Nas Zahir Thank you. I'm really curious about your own research. Dr. Rathmell? And can you share any exciting stories of discovery? I'm sure there's plenty of examples. Kimryn Rathmell Sure. So we're interested in kidney cancer, which is pretty broad. And that means that I have individuals in the group who are studying individual genes that are more likely mutated in kidney cancer. And I'm gonna tell you about one story, that's really one of my favorites. It was just published earlier this year. So it's about a histone methyltransferase called SETD2. And when it's mutated, we were seeing that there's a defect in mitosis, that was hard to explain, it looked like we were getting bridging chromosomes. One common way to get bridging chromosomes is by having chromosomes that have to centromeres. And so you know, we had to learn a whole new set of assays to take a look at mitotic spreads and look at chromosomal features, and discovered that when you lose this histone methyltransferase, that we get dicentric chromosomes. They're not just dicentric, they're isodicentric centric, so they're mirror imaged chromosomes. And the biology of how that happens is super interesting. And so it's a PNAS paper by Mason at al., encourage folks to read it, but creates this opportunity for a chromosome that's going to break. And so it was a new way to understand some of the heterogeneity that happens in kidney cancer. And that aha was when we first saw our dicentric chromosomes. And when we first realized that they were palindromic, and then could really, you know, go into hyperspeed to try to figure out why, why a replication fork would make this reverse turn, so that you could get this unusual chromosomal structure. So, really enjoy enjoy this really foundational basic science, but that's so important for cancer in general, kidney cancer in our particular case. Oliver Bogler We’re going to take a quick break and then we will be back to hear more from Dr. Rathmell. [music] Nas Zahir The NCI’s Rising Scholars Seminar Series is a monthly seminar series we started about one year ago. We cover topics of all areas of cancer research, including data science and molecular mechanisms of tumor biology, as well as behavioral science. We invite the speakers to discuss their career path as well as talk about their research highlights. The goal of the NCI Rising Scholars Seminar Series is to highlight the research and the contributions that are being made by postdoctoral scholars who are funded by NCI through career development awards or fellowships, and also those who are conducting research at the NCI in the Center for Cancer Research, for example. Talks are the third Thursdays of every month from two to three p.m. Eastern Time. The presenters for the NCI Rising Scholars Seminar Series are selected by a variety of means. The first set of measures is looking to see whether there's a first author publication in the prior year. So for 2024, we examined for all of 2023. And then we ranked papers based on their number of citations as well as the field citation rate. And we also looked at balance of demographics of the speakers, geographical location, as well as gender, race, and ethnicity to the extent possible. We'll put a link in the show notes to the events page for the NCI Rising Scholars Seminar Series so you can register as well as look up recordings for past webinars. [music] Oliver Bogler An attendee of our workshop asks, what advice do you have for investigators who work with hypothesis generating platforms, rather than traditional hypothesis testing research. These areas are within the mandate of NIH and the NCI, but study sections may be critical of this type of work, which is perhaps particularly relevant to the translational research areas. Kimryn Rathmell Yeah, I think that it's really important to realize we need all different kinds of investigation. We need traditional hypothesis testing, but but we need people who are very good at working across big datasets, for example, and using that to identify correlations or a hypothesis. I think this because we're at a training group session gets to, you know, working really closely with mentors, and being able to apply, you know, the state of the art, rigor to those kinds of analyses. Those things help study sections understand where this kind of analysis is really able to determine cause and effect. That's where I think it can be more challenging if it feels like it's, that's not clear. So helping the peer reviewers be able to see that you are able to make that kind of a separation can certainly help. But the bottom line is that that we need all of these different kinds of research. There's just too much out there to say that there's only one kind of question that can be answered anymore. Nas Zahir Thank you. In addition to being a... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/29736333

The Impactful Role of Mentors in Research Careers 01/18/2024

The Impactful Role of Mentors in Research Careers In this episode, we get to listen to Dr. Tayyaba Hasan, who is a Professor of Dermatology at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology (Harvard-MIT). We also have Dr. Girgis Obaid, who is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at The University of Texas at Dallas, and a former postdoc in Dr. Hasan's lab. Dr. Hasan discusses the establishment and expansion of the Office of Research Career Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, which aims to offer mentorship and career development opportunities for scientists. She underlines the importance of mentorship and guidance for career advancement. Dr. Obaid shared his experience of working in an environment that focused on preparing early-career scientists for their future careers. He explained how this environment contributed to his success in becoming an NCI K99/R00 awardee. Both Dr. Hasan and Dr. Obaid highlight the significance of soft skills, adaptability, and discernment for navigating science careers. They also discuss the challenges and opportunities in biomedical research and provide advice for those considering a career in academia or other science career paths. Show Notes:   Ad:       Your Turn Recommendations:   Movie Recommendation: TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI’s Center for Cancer Training. Today, we're talking to Dr. Tayyaba Hasan, Professor of Dermatology at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard MIT. Welcome. Tayyaba Hasan Thank you. Oliver Bogler and Dr. Girgis Obaid, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. Girgis Obaid Thank you. Oliver Bogler Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn. Dr. Hasan, in addition to your science, which we will talk about in a moment, you've had a truly remarkable career long level of engagement in mentoring and supporting early career investigators. And that's where I'd like to start. You've won numerous awards in this space. I'll just mention a couple in 2012, the mentor award from the National Postdoc Association. In 2010, Science Club for Girls Catalyst Award honoree. In 2009, Harvard Medical School, William Silen in Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring. And you founded the Office of Research Career Development at Massachusetts General Hospital. Please tell us why you did that and what the office focused on. Tayyaba Hasan So the formation of that office was truly a learned experience. So it came from what I learned about my own career. And I was based in a hospital, although my academic life was at a university, and in the hospital you can easily be lost as a PhD, as a basic scientist, and be a second-class citizen in a way. But more importantly, I had no real mentorship. And I saw people going in different directions and thinking they were faculty when they, in fact, were not. And they always said that was their career trajectory. But 14 years had passed post-PhD, and they hadn't made a move in that direction. So we, actually, as a group, obviously, no one does these things alone. We formed a committee, which was called the PhD Steering Committee. And it was an informal committee, unrecognized. And we came up with two or three asks, and one of them was this. And it took about 10 years of talking to the leadership. And fortunately, the leadership was enlightened enough that they bought into it, and they invested in this office. And so the goal here really was mentorship and advice for career development of scientists. So we did not distinguish between PhDs or MDs, whoever identified themselves as a researcher within a hospital environment. And to the best of my knowledge, this was the first hospital-based research career development office that was dedicated to it. Oliver Bogler So you said it took 10 years to really go through the process of founding the office and getting buy in from the leadership. What was the response in the general community at Mass General? Tayyaba Hasan Well, I think the first response is very understandable. If you've ever been a minority in any situation, it's impossible for the majority to see that there are problems. So I think those had to be brought out. There were no pro…, you know, there are excellent programs for residents and medical training at these hospitals. I mean, it's a premier hospital, but there really wasn't anything for training of PhDs or basic scientists, people who wanted to make a career in science, whether they were MDs or PhDs. So that really was the enlightening process and then coming up with what we wanted to make it, lasting and be part of the landscape. So I will say now I've been away from it. So I think it was around 2005, 2007 that it was formed and this is now 16 years and it's part of the landscape of the hospital. So I'm very proud. I'm not there anymore but it keeps on growing which is very gratifying. Oliver Bogler Yeah, true legacy. Now it's part of the Office of Research Careers in the Center for Faculty Development, is that correct? Tayyaba Hasan Yes, and there's an Office for Women's Careers and an Office for Clinical Research Careers and everything is within that faculty development and also there is a Postdoc Office now and a Graduate Student Office so it's truly expanded. Oliver Bogler But if you think back to the days when you started this work, what were some of the first programs that you developed? Tayyaba Hasan I had to go to the administrators or the leadership with a full curriculum actually. So we developed a curriculum of what were the trainings, you know, grant writing, how to run a lab. So as a PhD, you become a leader all of a sudden, the moment you become independent and you have no training of human resources, how to interact with postdocs, or students, and that can cause a lot of angst while you're worrying about tenure or whatever, getting a grant and getting your salary basically. And this is a soft money play institution. So there's some unique features, which means you have to bring in your own salary. You have to build infrastructure for everything. So some of those negotiation skills. And finally, I did interface with all the major offices, the human resources and the international office. Because today more and more of our scientists are immigrants and there were these visa pressures and they were afraid that if they didn't do what they were told they might lose their visa and so they needed some intercession from this office. Oliver Bogler Dr. Obaid, you did part of your training with Dr. Hasan. You were a postdoc, between 2013 and 2020, correct? Girgis Obaid That's correct, yes. Oliver Bogler So please tell us what was it like to work in that environment that Dr. Hasan was working to create? Girgis Obaid I think the one of the most obvious differences, I would say, with Dr. Hasan’s group is this very serious and dedicated focus on what's next, and how can you become prepared for what's next. And it was very different from other labs and other groups that I would hear of, which is basically just, you know, pushing out data, pushing up publications. And this was very, very different. And this kind of had a ripple down effect. And also the senior postdocs that we'd interacted with. So there were a couple of people that I was working with directly. And just seeing how they also focused on what's next, what does it look like to be trained properly as an academic or, or beyond. That was also something that I really noticed that was very valuable in her group was that there was no particular pressure to be a particular individual after your postdoc training. The future was in your hands and the opportunity was there created for you and the environment created for you to be whatever you wanted to be in the best capacity that you could. And that is really rather unique. And I've spoken to many, many postdocs over the years and that just simply isn't the case in a lot of other places. And, you know, without being somewhat hyperbolic about it, I really do think it has shaped everything about who I am as a PI, as an independent PI now, because I look back and everything from, you know, as Dr. Hasan was talking about, navigating social dynamics within the group, dealing with different personalities, dealing with hierarchy among students and various different nuances. We really did get a fantastic opportunity to be able to figure all of that out in that period of time. So there was obviously some uncertainty and nervousness starting my own group here, but I really felt like I got the best training possible really to be able to equip me to be a successful PI myself. Oliver Bogler So really the recognition that becoming a successful scientist, whether it be a research team leader as you are now, but also in any other kind of science careers, is more than just being good at science, right? It's also being good at other things, sometimes called soft skills, right? People skills and management skills. I actually think they're quite hard. Um, did I get that right? Girgis Obaid Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Incredibly challenging, actually. And I could say almost half the job is trying to navigate your way around the soft skills, because you can be trained as a scientist with a technical expertise, you come from anywhere. When you're put in a position of leadership and trying to mentor your own students, that is not enough. It's as simple as that. You really must have these other skills, in addition to everything else, like the grant writing skills, the scientific writing publications etc etc. Oliver Bogler Right. So Dr. Hasan, when you think back to the, when you first had the idea for this office, and essentially the programs in it, which were not common at the time, you pointed to the fact that you yourself did not have any strong mentors in your early career. And is it just that you wanted to be something that you did not have for others? Tayyaba Hasan Well, I think I'm basically a social worker at heart. But in that time, I think the two things that I wanted was people to enjoy themselves at what they were doing and do their best. But there was no environment for that. And I had absolutely no guidance. So it just was that I felt very committed to it that I decided to make this crazy commitment of running a lab full time. And at that time, my lab was very large. It was 25 people. So, and doing the second job, yeah. But it's been the most gratifying experience because now I see people like Girgis and other folks who have gone and become professors elsewhere. And they're really, the one thing is that they're really good mentors. Whenever I see their, my scientific grandchildren, they always tell me how good mentors these guys are, which is about caring people, you know. It's very important. The legacy that you leave and the people you impact is the most important thing. Oliver Bogler So you just mentioned that caring about people is an important element in being a good mentor. I'd like to just go a little bit deeper. I've had mentors and some of them have been really great, others not so good, but it would be hard for me to really define in a few sentences what a good mentor is. What's your take on that, Dr. Hasan? Tayyaba Hasan Well, the first advice I give is that your supervisor is not necessarily your mentor. You know. And as you've probably heard, it's said that mentors can be tormentors if you treat your supervisor as your mentor only. So it could be that I'm a great supervisor for research and we… and highly impactful universities, are full of very good researchers. And so they can be very good supervisors in the sense of putting you on, you know, deadlines and deadlines and Nature papers and Science papers, right? Oliver Bogler Yeah, and guiding your science, I guess, right? Tayyaba Hasan Guiding your science really well, but guiding your future. And like I said, it worked out for me because I had no plans for the future, but I just wanted to do the best I could. But I think there are people who need a structure and spending time with them and figuring out what they want. And it could be quite different from what, for example, I didn't know initially when Girgis came that he would end up being in academia. And same thing with other people. I've said, you can go into industry and you'll have my full support, you know? And people have gone in and they're doing well in industry. Oliver Bogler Yeah. Dr. Obed, so you've recently made the transition from, you know, being in that early phase of your career where you were probably primarily focused on your own research and now you are leading a team. I wonder having had that shift in perspective, what your assessment is of the field of biomedical research from a career point of view, lots of things are happening. What's your perspective? Girgis Obaid My perspective is that it is constantly changing, probably changing at a faster pace than it ever has been. And I would say to be adaptable is probably the most important thing that you can have in order to be successful. And that goes for everything, not just the science. I mean, science will evolve in of itself and you have to be adaptable to that also, but adaptable to the kind of people that will walk in through the door who want to do a PhD, who want to do undergraduate research. And that changes dramatically over time. I mean, this is something that Dr. Hasan and I have spoken about a lot of our PhD students when they come in. The basic understanding is that they want to work in industry and that's, you know, and that's perfectly fine, perfectly respectable. But I do recall from when I was a PhD student, that was not necessarily the case. And so that's been a huge drift in how people perceive academic careers, even up until the point of the PhD is that the end goal has changed a lot. And that also means that the mentoring has to adapt to that also. So how do the students then become as equipped as possible to be successful in the academic careers? And so things that I'm trying to instill, and again, I got this from the Office for Research Career Development, is to talk to these students about networking and what it means to build up an online profile and LinkedIn profiles and connecting with people and informational interviews. And all of that I myself learned during my postdoc as I was trying to navigate what I was gonna do. But that's really helped me then also tell my own students the ones that are pretty clear on industry and like, this is what you need to do. These are the people you need to speak to. Don't neglect things like manuscripts because that's absolutely critical for industry as well and finishing projects, being able to start and complete a project. So there's been a huge drift in terms of where people end up. And I think that has also made me think very carefully about what it means to mentor within my own abilities. And there comes a point where like, I don't really know what else to say to the student who wants to work in, let's say, patent law, but I know who they can speak to. And I think that's important, from my perspective, at least. Oliver Bogler Dr. Hasan, you've seen this, obviously you've been observing it and have been extremely active in this domain for many years now. I wonder what your perspective is on where we are in 2023? When you started off with your work that we just talked about, mentoring was not something people talked about, but now wherever you go, you see offerings, both for mentors and mentees to what is mentoring, getting trained and so on. Are we in a better place in 2023 than we were when you started out? Tayyaba Hasan I think we definitely are in a better place. Are we there yet? No, but I think we're definitely in a better place. And I'm not sure we'll ever be ‘there’ as in anything else in the ideal spot because the pressures are on both mentors or the supervisors and the mentees. And I think that the empathy that one can have with the mentees is to make them aware that this is not an ideal world and they have to negotiate around it, navigate around it. So for example, in my own group, all the postdocs who wish to, write a K99 and a R00 if they wish to go into academia. Now that, as you know, takes away a lot of time from the lab. I'm getting a lot of people coming to me and saying, what do I do because I'm not being allowed to write it? Because it is a commitment, right? So that's one. And for those who didn't want to write it, they felt guilty. And I said, absolutely not. You know, just, you have to write papers, unfortunately, or fortunately, because it shows that you can seal the deal. You know, you've worked on something and you can express it. But other than that, it's entirely up to you. But the important thing for the mentees, for the postdocs, or students to realize is that life is not built around them. So you have to be very balanced. Think of the pressures that the PI has, the supervisor has also. So it's a lot of give and take because you just cannot become a prima donna either as a supervisor or as a student. And that's a reality check that needs to be given gently and kindly, but needs to be given, yeah. Oliver Bogler I mean, when you open the scientific press these days, you are reading a lot of articles about dissatisfaction with the academic career in biomedicine. Obviously, we have heard through listening efforts at the NIH run by an Advisory Committee to the Director of the NIH that there are many challenges that people in their graduate student and postdoc years are facing. I wonder what your comment on that might be. Dr. Obaid, are you having trouble recruiting people to your team? Girgis Obaid It's a little different because our team has pretty much all either graduate students or undergraduate. Postdocs, they're not as prominent as they were in terms of the number of applicants like Mass General, for example. And so I feel like the recruitment of graduate students is very, very different. And because at that point, academia is not necessarily on their mind. It's more just about, okay, I want an advanced degree. So I think that's a little bit different when it comes to, I guess the, you can call it negative press around... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/29532743

The Future of AI and Cancer Research 01/04/2024

The Future of AI and Cancer Research In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, Dr. Tony Kerlavage and Jeff Schilling discuss the role of AI in cancer research and the challenges and safety measures associated with its use. They emphasize the need for standardized data and the importance of addressing biases in AI models. They also discuss the recruitment of talent in data science and the potential for partnerships with Silicon Valley. They highlight the complexity of AI and the need for continuous learning in the field. The episode concludes with advice for aspiring data scientists. Show Notes: Ad: Your Turn Recommendations: TRANSCRIPT Oliver Bogler Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler. I work at the NCI in the Center for Cancer Training. On Inside Cancer Careers, we explore all the different ways that people join the fight against disease and hear their stories. This is our first episode of 2024 and we are changing things up a little. We've heard from our listeners and we will be making shorter episodes while still giving you a clear view of the many interesting things our guests do in cancer research and the career paths that they are on. Today, we're talking to two leaders at NCI about AI in cancer research and what the future of data science looks like. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn. Oliver Bogler It's a pleasure to welcome Dr. Tony Kerlavage, Director of NCI's Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology. Welcome. Tony Kerlavage Thank you, Oliver. Pleasure to be here. Oliver Bogler Welcome also to Jeff Schilling, NCI's Chief Information Officer. Jeff Shilling Well, thank you. Excited to be here. Oliver Bogler Tony, a year ago, you wrote a blog post, Growing the Field, NCI Fellowship Opportunities in Data Science, in which you describe the rapidly growing field of data science and the opportunities for joining the field with a cancer focus at the NCI. What's changed in the intervening 12 months? Tony Kerlavage Well, Oliver, I mean, one thing I'll say is you can't open an issue of the NCI news briefing, an informatics smart brief, the Washington Post technology 202 without seeing multiple articles on artificial intelligence. This is a rapidly developing field and the articles aren't always consistent as to whether AI is a good thing or a bad thing. Having tremendous breakthroughs or isn't quite ready for prime time. There's a lot of mixed feelings about AI right now. We know that it has tremendous potential, but there was a recent National Academy of Medicine conference on AI. And the participants there were very excited about AI, which holds a lot of potential. But there’s also acknowledgment that it needs to be consistently monitored to assure that it keeps performing. So, it clearly is the direction that a lot of work is going and can really change the face of what can happen in cancer research. Oliver Bogler So you also pointed in that article to the fact that there's a strong demand for people to join data science. Is AI accelerating that even further? Tony Kerlavage I think so. I think there's certainly a lot of buzz around AI, and it's certainly out in the lay community as well. But certainly a lot of researchers are looking at this or are, you know, experimenting with the tools that are available to them. I know a lot of my colleagues have been, you know, they've been saying, hey, how can we get access to this within the NCI? Can we get a ChatGPT set up? I know Jeff can address that issue, but everybody wants to try out these new tools and see how they can apply them and really radically change how they're doing their data science. Oliver Bogler So Jeff, Tony already mentioned ChatGPT. It burst on the scene about a year or so ago. And the world has been abuzz with artificial intelligence, great expectations, and serious concerns have been swamping the media, along with quite a lot of human drama. AI has been part of the cancer research effort for a while, though, right? Jeff Shilling Yes, definitely. I would say it's this generative capability that really shocked everyone. The amazing speed and thoroughness of the interaction with these new large language models that when it happened, it was just over a year ago, maybe a year and a week ago. So of course, AI, though, one of the flavors of AI, since there's, I think, considered seven or eight different flavors of AI. I think the biggest one that we've been using in cancer is the one on images. So we've been able to take a lot of radiology images, a lot of scientific images, it's like pure data. So there's very little human bias or significance or subtlety that you have to worry about. You're just basically saying, I know these patients have had this outcome. Here are these images that we took five years ago. Can you find a difference in those things? So, it's great for doing work like that, that we're doing on the research side. And certainly for all the diagnostics that's happening to help with the speed that radiologists can read images and go through images and keep the right ones, annotate the right ones. So there's a lot of that, that was happening in industry for 20 years, right? You have cameras taking very quick photos and things like that. But I will say that has all been a slow growth where you can feel in your mind that you have a grasp on how it's going to impact the NCI or the cancer community in general. But when DALL-E and the other image generation ones came out and now the large language models, everybody, to me, feels a little nervous, almost like tipped over. Where you're like, wow, this is so powerful that we're missing two big things. We're missing really, really good data to make sure that what we feed it is going to come out and be controlled. And the same thing I said that we have with images, we don't really have with a lot of the textual data that we have. The other thing is we really don't have a construct to control it, to say what is valid, what is accurate. And we have such a hard lesson learned with social media coming out, all of us thinking it's great. We all have Twitter accounts. We all have these social media accounts. And all of a sudden it starts to be used in a way that no one predicted. And all of a sudden we have no control. So I think now with AI people are saying, this is even more dangerous. And we need to get some of these controls in place. So. Tony Kerlavage Yeah, if I could just add onto that, one of the things that has jumped out to me is that these ChatGPT tools will do whatever you ask them to do. So people have demonstrated that they can generate misinformation. They can generate deep fake images, for example. So this is part of, I think, the challenge that we have with the general public. And sometimes people are skeptical about science to start with. So I think it's incumbent upon us to really demonstrate that we can control how we use these tools and use them in a manner that's not going to create misinformation or in some way compromise people's privacy. I think those are the big issues that people are concerned about. Oliver Bogler So what is the NCI doing in order to allow its scientists and perhaps cancer researchers across the country to access this technology, but do it in a safe way? Jeff Shilling I think we're just getting started. I don't really have a great answer. We have the standard system controls that we use, which are basically saying the computational capacity that we use must be secure. But we just talked about something completely different, which is the output of that can be wrong or false or even, and maybe not accidentally so, but purposely so. And so we don't have that, really, control in any model yet. So I think that's something that we're going to have to start having a lot of discussion on. And again, we take it for granted. We've been at the National Cancer Institute for a long time. We take it for granted that what the NCI says is taken as fact. And we saw with COVID and the vaccines, and all of a sudden people just were like, well, I don't believe that. And so I think we don't have those things in place. We don't have like a seal of approval or a UL listing, let's say, something like that. Underwriters Laboratories, you know, we don't have an independent body saying, we validated this and it's safe. So I think we're just going to have to start doing that. But we do know that data we have to put into these models is not yet good enough. We do have a lot of work trying to shore up that data quality in a systemic way. Tony Kerlavge Yeah, if it's OK, Oliver, I'd like to add on to two things that Jeff brought up, two very important things. Certainly in terms of having confidence in systems themselves, Jeff's absolutely right. We don't have this rigorous testing of things yet. But there are a couple of big things that we know where we need to start. For example, we know we can't just take this large language model, the ChatGPT-4 type of model that has all of the data on the internet flowing into it. We need to have private models. We need to control what information is going into it. And that can really help cut down on misinformation or the hallucinations that everybody reads about. We know the things that are required for these systems at a very high level. Implementing it is another issue to Jeff's point, but we know it needs to be open architecture, that it has to have, you know, well-documented APIs to interact with the system, clear and thorough documentation of the whole system, and a clear understanding of how the systems can be used. The second part, Jeff brought up - very important - about the data itself. Again, there's been a lot of conversation around this, and there are a handful or so different very important points about the data. First of all, to be AI ready. A study has to be properly designed, right? So you need to, for example, make sure that there's no bias in your data sets. They must be a sufficient sample size. They've got to be large enough that these very powerful models are actually going to give some results without having certain biases already built in from the algorithm itself. Oliver Bogler And let me just ask on the biases, is that, for example, a non-representative group of samples coming into the data set? Tony Kerlavage Yeah, that would be one of them, absolutely. Representation across various populations is a key part of that study design right up front. So I would say that a lot of the data sets, a lot of the legacy data sets we have right now, are going to be very challenging, to use those in an AI context. And I think we need to start thinking prospectively about designing the experiments in such a way that we weed out that bias, have the proper representation across populations, have sufficient sample size and completeness of the data. Missing data is another pitfall with these systems. We also have to make sure that you know identifiable information is protected, that the data themselves are shared in a fair manner, and quality is key. Consistency in format, and the nomenclature used, and the terminologies are being used, and things being properly formatted. If that's not there, I think you can end up confusing these systems. Oliver Bogler So I think one of the things I struggle with as a non-expert who is very interested in AI is this difference that you've already alluded to between sort of what has gone on in the past, for example, image analysis, right? So if I see a lecture on an AI ML approach to image analysis, I can understand that an image is taken, vectors are created, for example, around edges or something like that, and then this is classified, and then a model is trained to distinguish two populations and then test it with some sample data that comes in. I get all that. And I think, although I don't understand it mathematically, I sort of intuitively understand that if I was smart enough, I could. But when you talk about generative AI, you know, I listened to a lot of podcasts about this. I hear experts say no one can really explain how it works. Is that true? Tony Kerlevage I think it's very hard to understand how it works. It's, you know, it does seem very much like a black box. Clearly you can define these things mathematically. People smarter than me can do that. But for most of us, I think it really is a black box and there's a big level of trust involved in it. Oliver Bogler Still, it's an exciting time. So let me take a slight turn and sort of ask you about recruiting talent to the NCI. You're both in leadership positions here. Your fields are adjacent to Silicon Valley. That's obviously a great place to go if you're interested in data science, if you're interested in AI. How do we at the NCI and in the cancer field in general, how do we compete for the talent that we need? Tony Kerlevage Well, competing with Silicon Valley is a really tall order. We do have constraints, certainly in the government and even in academia, about getting really talented people. I think we get people who are motivated by things other than the very slick Silicon Valley jobs and exorbitant salaries. People have a passion for the research, passion for the work that is being done. But I think there are opportunities to take a tool like this... There are some people who really love working in the space and working on algorithms, that sort of thing, which is great. At the NCI, I think it's more about the people who work here in the Intramural Program or the people that we're funding really are more of an applied science, taking these tools and trying to solve a biomedical problem with them. Trying to do better predictions for cancer outcomes, for example. So I think those are the people who have a very different background we're looking to recruit and would be attracted to coming to the NCI. Jeff Shilling I think Oliver too, if you're looking at young people, you know, so people basically in that transition period, determining where they're going to take a position. One of the things Tony and I discussed was creating some starting … starter positions related to a clear career path, You know, in preparation for this, I wrote some notes about the kind of person that would be successful. And really, I think it's someone who probably underestimates the knowledge that they have and the skills that they have. They don't focus on that. They focus more on the vastness of what they don't know. And how could I possibly get into data science? I'm a bench researcher or I've only worked with agents. Like, well, the reality is all this is new all the time. And you really need, to me, if you can trust that what you know is very valuable, and then if you can add that your interest in data science or information technology or technology, kind of any kind, and then you really look inside yourself and say, I have a continuous learning model. I like to learn. Well, that's probably the number one key to success in this space. And then I think the other thing you really have to want to do is connect the scientists to this technology. And that's really what Tony and I are doing all the time. We're kind of reading a whole bunch of things, understanding, trying to understand in a way that we can translate it to the scientists who will ask what we think are going to be very complicated questions. But in the end are very, very simple questions. How do I get access to this large language model so I can play around and see what it could do? And then all of a sudden, it doesn't really become a very complicated question. So I think it's really that. It's to us, we can be very attractive, but we're going to have to either catch people in a career transition, like I wanna get out of the scientific space I'm in a little bit and go into this other space, or start something that's a little more advantageous to somebody just coming out of graduate school and not two postdocs later, right? Not five, six years later. Oliver Bogler CBIIT has created training programs for people like that, right? Jeff Shilling We have, but it has been a very, not meant to recruit people into our space. It's, it's kind of been an opportunity for them to learn about what is, what is data science and what does it mean? Oliver Bogler So I'll just note that we interviewed Dr. Peng Jiang from the intramural program a few months ago, and he had an interesting story. He graduated from Princeton with a computer science degree and initially went to work for Pixar, and then for personal reasons became motivated to work on cancer and is now an independent investigator at the NCI. Jeff, I wanted to follow up with you on another strategy that I think you've told me about, which is that forming partnerships with some of the biggest entities in Silicon Valley is another way to bring both their technology and opportunities perhaps for people to work in the cancer space and not be disconnected from Silicon Valley, in fact, to have a connection there. Isn't that right? Jeff Shilling Well, this is where I would say we utilize the power of the National Cancer Institute. We are very large. We have a lot of work going on. We have a lot of people doing that work. And it's very enticing to these players in this space to be able to work with us because they can. They don't have to train us. I would say, I don't know how replicable that is to other scientific groups. Because we try to just use what we can and it can happen quickly. Oliver, you've seen it where the vendors, when we ask for a call, they get on the line. When we say we want to do this, they're like, how can we help? I don't think that's everyone's experience. I think other people are going to have to use other capabilities to get these players to play with them. But it's also possible to partner with us and work with them. So I would say the biggest thing is realizing that these vendors desperately need us. They need our vision, our technical understanding of the space, and they need the data, and the people to work with. And we're also so research-focused that we don't have just this clinical space that when they go to maybe work at a cancer center or university, and all of a sudden, it's a very different kind of agenda. So, and we know they have a lot of that going on. So I think that's been helpful for us. Tony Kerlevage I think it's actually unavoidable working with these large companies, right? Although, you know, NIH has a culture of open science, of open data, of open software, and I don't think that's changed necessarily. You know, we fund academicians to develop tools, but the field is just advanced. The IT field has advanced so rapidly. Whether it’s just large enterprise systems or AI, as we've been talking about this, this sort of very emerging thing right now with the large language models etc. There's no way that academia can actually keep up with it. Academicians, of course, are constantly contributing to this and a lot of stuff that the commercial companies build are based upon things that are actually discovered in academic environments. But for us, we can't afford to do all of this on our own. We have to take advantage of all of this investment that these large companies are making in infrastructure and then offering to the world. And to Jeff's point, they love working with us because what they can learn from what we're doing can be used in a much wider context. But I think the work that we do will be accelerated by just taking some of these off the shelf platforms that they have and implementing them... /episode/index/show/4f5e9dbf-d493-4e89-b5d9-15fa02860625/id/29324963

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