Arthritis Collaborating for a cure
[Music]
following the theme of tedx cambridge
2021 i would like to speak about
untangling networks in science
using my research into osteoarthritis as
an example i will highlight the
complexity of issues faced in research
and how we prepare the next generation
of scientists to untangle them
that’s the next generation of scientists
who will develop future tests for
diagnosis
and resurgence are novel treatments for
those diseases
alexia will give her experience of
studentship in my laboratory before
covid
and the fun of dissecting cow feed but
before we talk about
why we need to prepare future scientists
i want to talk about the general
challenges
of research that need untangling since
1998
i have focused my research on
osteoarthritis which is a degenerative
condition of joints typically the knee
in the hip
in healthy joints there’s a tough
slippery smooth surface
which is called articular cartilage
which lines the ends of bones allowing
them to easily glide over each other
facilitating almost frictionless
movements of your joint
when that cartilage becomes worn or
damaged it can start to degrade
that leads to pain swelling and
restricted joint movement
arthritis osteoarthritis being the most
common form
and everyone here will know someone with
this disease one in five adults over the
age of 45 will have
osteoarthritis in the knee and one in
nine suffer with hip
osteoarthritis each year nearly nine
million people
have sought treatment for osteoarthritis
that’s the equivalent of the population
of london
now one of the major risk factors for
this disease is age
you are more likely to suffer from
osteoarthritis the older you are
another key risk factor is body weight
now the relationship between obesity and
osteoarthritis is complicated
but in simplistic terms an increase in
body weight puts more strain on joints
so as an ageing population who are
becoming more obese the incidence of
osteoarthritis is only going to increase
in the uk and across the world
now this has huge implications to us as
a society
osteoarthritis is the biggest cause of
missed working days
it’s the biggest cause of disability it
leads to a huge number of hip and knee
replacement surgeries
every year and that’s with the
associated cost to the national health
service
and those with osteoarthritis um there
may be in too much pain to be able to
work and to contribute to taxes to
society
so osteoarthritis can have a dramatic
effect on the sufferer too with living
having to live with chronic pain as an
increased risk of depression
they’ll have a higher risk of metabolic
diseases and
their lifespan will on average be five
years less
so the impact on osteoarthritis and
other musculoskeletal diseases
has both on the individual and
population is therefore very well
recognized
uh indeed in 1998 experts from around
the world supported by international
governments and the then secretary
general of the united nations
established the ten years from 2000 to
2010 as the bone and joint decade
this was to focus resources into this
area
now before twos out the year 2000 if you
searched for research articles using the
term osteoarthritis
there was about 40 000 publications and
the first in 1883 that’s 40 000 journal
papers
in 116 years during the bone and joint
decade there was a further 20 000
articles published so this clearly had
the effect of generating research into
osteoarthritis
and since 2010 over 50 000 more articles
in scientific journals were published
so we have seen a dramatic rise in
research and this this is
goes along with amazing new technologies
to support research scientists
but despite all of this there’s still no
cure
now i’d suggest this isn’t because a
cure isn’t achievable we are making
progress
for example a group based in the us
recently discovered similarities between
human ankle joints
and those of axolotls now these are
animals which have the potential to
completely regenerate their limbs
including their joints
and their cartilage so this novel
understanding could
lead the way to a cure it’s just an
example of a potential step towards our
goal we don’t know if this avenue of
research will lead to a cure
maybe one of the other many research
areas will be successful and there lies
a problem
now it’s wonderful that so many
brilliant minds are focused on the
problem of osteoarthritis
they have access to technology which can
generate more data than we could have
dreamed of 20 years ago
but there is so much research it’s
difficult to see through the tangle of
it all
to give you an idea of the scale of the
problem in 2019 there was
815 institutions involved in
non-surgical treatment of osteoarthritis
research
and that was across 69 different
countries and the slide shows the
complexity of those global networks
but it’s not only the human network
networks i’m also talking about the
networks of scientific data
the technology available available to
researchers allows us to investigate
genetics
pathways gene expression biochemical
pathways and so much more
all contributing to a mountain of data
and the more complex these networks
become the more
challenging they become so future
scientists are going to need to access
access to the research networks around
the world but also the skills to
navigate through the complexity of the
data
an anonymous of the university of
cambridge once said if i have seen
further it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants
and sir isaac newton was referring to
how advances in science build upon the
work of our predecessors
and the same holds true today but i
would suggest
that the view from the giant shoulders
is now impeded by a thick fog of data
so are still reliant on the future
generations of scientists to progress
our understanding of disease
but with the challenges of tangled
networks how do we encourage the next
generation research
scientists to rise to that particular
challenge how do we give them the skills
and opportunities
to find the cure amongst the complexity
of these networks
now when considering the content of this
talk i reflected on my journey and how i
arrived as a research scientist
after completing my a levels i studied
life science degree at the university of
portsmouth
and between my second and third year i
saw an advert that was posted onto the
course notice board
it offered a summer studentship at the
university of aberdeen in north scotland
now my thought process was along the
lines of well my mother was born in
scotland therefore i am half scottish
i’d never been to aberdeen before like
to visit now you might think this wasn’t
the best motivation for me choosing a
studentship and i would agree
and i was very surprised when the person
who offered the studentship dr kenneth
page
picked me he gave me that opportunity
and it changed my life
spending eight weeks in a research
laboratory really opened my eyes to
scientific research
now i’d always enjoyed lab classes but
this was different it was challenging it
was tough
it was all of those things that make
science hard and i loved it
on a personal level dr page he’d showed
that faith in me
as an undergraduate student he’d never
met so
being that young undergraduate knowing
someone had the confidence in me taking
their time to mentor me
helped to give me that belief to
consider research as
a possible future career route now from
aberdeen as a place to spend the summer
the experience changed my aspirations
wanting to base myself in academic
research following that studentship dr
campage offered me a phd and i
really haven’t looked back and i am now
in that position where i can provide
students those opportunities that people
gave me
and this is where i hand over to alexia
to give her view on the experience
in the first days of my biomedical
science undergraduate degree
i’m probably a little longer than i
would care to admit
i remember romanticizing myself in a lab
coat
stepping up to receive some sort of
successful scientist award
whatever that might be and why wouldn’t
i
our degree was highly immersive in terms
of learning the ins and outs of
human biology and their application to
contemporary research
we were trained for three years with the
goal to start working in labs and become
leading experts in our field
i had readied myself for overflowing job
offers
internships research opportunities and
more
it was only when i had to start thinking
of where to apply
myself and where to find these
opportunities
but i realized these were not so much
expectations
as much as they were goals
breaking into science is not your
average achievement
and the statistics for those that do are
much bleaker than you think
confronting this world as a budding
scientist
is daunting as much as it is challenging
and exactly why opportunities like the
ones dr bush and i had
are so valuable i remember learning
about funding research
and all the formalities that go with
research grants
really dampened the successful scientist
in a lab coat fantasy for me
and so to prevent my expectations
getting bruised any further
keep it real and work hard became a big
mantra of mine of course
this completely went out the window when
i discovered that
out of all people dr bush had awarded me
a highly sought-after research
scholarship
following his groundbreaking work
it felt surreal to be conducting
research
that i could only dream of reading about
at that stage
and i was getting paid to do so
no surely somebody’s pranked me my new
mantra
the cutting-edge techniques dr bush
taught me
and the experiments i could design
following them were enough
to make me fall in love with the lab and
never think of leaving one again
i even became strangely in love with
dissecting cow feet
to extract cartilage cells that’s as
much detail i can get into before it
gets gory
so what actually came from this
experience
did i become some sort of a wunderkind
nobel winning scientist
you know shockingly no
did we publish our findings no
did we finish our experiments also no
ordinarily i think these would be common
things
one might consider to measure a
successful experience like this
and certainly all of these things
are tremendously valuable to prepare
oneself for the research world as
it turns out though the success of this
opportunity
and any that i gained after that really
were determined far less by things like
these
i came to realize that what the
studentship gave me
was an environment where i could
question
create and even fail confidently
knowing that the only consequence of
that was learning
for first immersion into professional
work i think
we could probably all agree this was a
very rare opportunity
usually in a new job we’re all so caught
up
in looking good and deserving of that
opportunity to work
that we rarely question does it deserve
us and why do we only consider
what happens when we become who we want
the goal so to speak rather than
the process of getting there the reality
perhaps because we aren’t always given
the chance of doing so
i still hold it an immeasurable
privilege to have seen my value
and my potential through the eyes of
somebody who was once in my very own
shoes
it evoked a level of trust and of
empathy
that i think are largely uncommon in
science
but should be more prevalent
we all deserve the privilege to grow
into and take ownership of the
confidence
that somebody had seen within us all
along
taking ownership over my interests and
optimizing my existing knowledge
is what i learned from my first
experience in research
when deciding whether to pursue research
i think
what deters a lot of people is the
possibility
of dedicating your life to the
unanswerable
it is definitely true that we may not be
able to answer the unanswerable
but we may be able to change the
question if we start from changing
ourselves
this for me meant temporarily leaving
research
and joining the very exciting field of
artificial intelligence
and data science we live in an age
of unprecedented amounts of information
and technologies
that can help dakota it seems
so satisfying to me in biology at least
that untangling built up information of
the past
has become a mission of our present and
of our future
in fields everywhere but most important
to me
healthcare ai and data science hold
enough
potential as to warrant a true
revolution
it may seem scary at first but why not
develop technologies that help
humans focus more on humans
the pathological complexity of
osteoarthritis
the center of my undergraduate degree
still requires much investigation to
prevent the condition altogether
but who appropriately manages the
realities
of depression and chronic pain that this
condition
still causes and in a broad sense this
is one of the many ways
in which developing technologies to take
on greater responsibilities
can help humans get back to their
humanity and
offer true unmitigated support in
situations like these
this kind of feedback of nurturing the
continuity
and heritability of ideas and science
but also
the drive to question and to create
i believe are essential to a generation
of conscientious new scientists
for me it all started from cow feet
and from a mentor who believed in me
where will it start for you
so out of everything alexi just talked
about the thing that resonated most with
me was the importance of having the
opportunity to fail to make mistakes
my experiences weren’t such a long time
ago but i’d
forgotten all the mistakes i’ve made in
my aberdeen studentship now that isn’t
because i’m now infallible far from it
but challenging yourself and making
mistakes is kind of now the normal
now this mindset was fostered at first
in my studentship and hopefully with
experience i now make less mistakes
but what is really important is i’m not
afraid to make them and take those
those sort of gambles sometimes
now in a lecture i can see that
enthusiasm for research now it was there
before the summer studentship but
hopefully the opportunity nurtured it
allowed it to grow and to flourish
it changed her aspiration and she’s now
preparing herself for a possible
future research career um and her
postgraduate studies now into artificial
intelligence
she is far better equipped to untangle
networks than i am
so by providing studentships we can
never guarantee that that student will
become the next research scientist
but they will however benefit from the
experience wherever they end up
but if we cannot be sure that each
student will add to a conveyor belt of
talent carrying them directly into a phd
you know is it worth it well i would
answer yes in fact we need more
studentship so we can guarantee that
more of them will go on to those medical
research careers
so how do we get more studentships well
those
people the ones who funds research
scholarships we need them to fund more
those universities who host them we need
to give them the opportunities and the
time to host more
and this will give more opportunities
for our young scientists to experience
the rewards
of scientific pursuits now when
considered in the context of the cost of
medical research in general
they are incredibly good value about one
to three thousand pounds for a summer
studentship
now this might sound a lot but when
compared to a half million pound
three-year research project
it really isn’t so we also need
universities to be able to free up their
academics time
my my colleagues have little time to
take on just some annual leave most
years
and so rather than thinking about
maximizing staff workload in talk
courses
universities should also consider the
time for staff to supervise
these studentships that’s the real
opportunity to
encourage the next generation i mean
after all isn’t this what universities
are meant to be about
now i’m looking forward to being
successful in securing future research
studentships
to give other students the opportunities
i was given these are the scientists who
are going to develop the cures for those
ailments that i
my family the wider community that’s you
um that may be afflicted by and you
never know it might be an injection
alexa has played a role in developing to
clear the arthritis in all of our knees
thank you for listening
you