Outreach
How to use storytelling
Both cohorts of iMED students have spent a day learning and practicing how storytelling can be applied to science communication. The workshops resulted in a number of stories useful when doing outreach and communicating science to lay people. The stories range from fairytales and fictional patient cases, to personal accounts on how science influences our lives. Take time to read a few examples of the stories below.
Meet Rasmus. He loves to go on hikes, read and spend quality time with his family. Most importantly though, he loves to eat! Yes, he certainly has his priorities sorted. Everything was going on well in Rasmus’s life until one day he started feeling a continuous pain in the upper right part of his belly. He thought it was just a stomachache and would go away with time, but after weeks of suffering and being nagged by his wife to go to a doctor, he finally went for a check-up. Very bad news followed, as the doctor diagnosed Rasmus with liver cancer. His doctor explained to him that liver cancer is a very complex disease that is also deadly, and that he had a fatty liver which developed into liver cancer. Rasmus was confused and asked how, and his doctor explained that fats metabolize in the body to produce certain toxic compounds which lead to a fatty liver that can cause cancer in the liver. Naturally, the question which followed was that if he stops consuming fats now, would he get better? Alas, if the human body were that simple!
Rasmus is only one of millions in a year to get liver cancer. We have observed that not all liver cancer cells benefit from removing fats, in fact some of them become even more aggressive. My research aim is to understand the mechanism behind this happening in different patients by using representative liver cancer cells in the lab. All of these cells are grown in the lab without adding extra fats, and some of these cells grow a lot faster without fats, while others start to die. My aim is to see how genes are expressed in these cells. This would provide us with a blueprint of how to present a diet plan to liver cancer patients such as Rasmus. Hopefully with this information we can simply tell them – to eat or not to eat fats?
It was a September afternoon of my first year of Bachelor's. After a long day of lessons, I was tired and wanted to go home. Just one hour more and I could have left. Then he arrived, a typical old, Italian professor with his brown suit. My first Immunology lesson started and, without even noticing, I was entirely captured.
“The immune response is our first line of defense against diseases.” He said. “Different players intervene. Among them, antibodies are like magic bullets. They are shot by special immune cells, called B cells, to get rid of invaders and keep us safe”. I felt amazed by the strength of this perfectly built machine that is the human body.
However, as in all stories, things are not that easy. Unfortunately, antibodies are not always invincible. Sometimes, they are also blind and unable to recognize and attack all the bad guys. Among these, cancer cells can hide from our defenses, multiply, and invade like conquerors in a foreign country, during a war.
And, as we know, war only brings destruction, pain, and suffering.
Almost 9 years later, I am a Ph.D. student in Cancer research. It is funny thinking that I work with antibodies, trying to arm them for fighting cancer. Indeed, even though clever, cancer cells can be hijacked in several ways. Like normal cells, cancer cells have many “doors” on their surface, called receptors. These doors allow exchanges between the internal and external environment, like nutrient intake, or start essential biological processes, like cell growth. In cancer, the cell dynamics are altered to provide cancer cells a growth advantage. As a result, the number of these doors may increase dramatically compared to normal tissues, to sustain uncontrolled tumor proliferation and spread throughout the body. Accordingly, tumor cells may also have unique receptors lacking on normal healthy cells.
And here comes the magic (at least for me 😊).
In my research, I am trying to exploit one of these many “gateways” abnormally present on cancer cells to strategically deliver antibodies armed with potent toxic weapons, like “Trojan horses." Indeed, antibodies are smart as they can recognize specific “doors” on the cancer cell and open or completely lock them. In my case, the antibody can enter the cell and release the toxic compound, ultimately causing cell death while sparing the healthy cells. This is one of the strengths of this approach as it reduces the toxic effects compared to common chemotherapeutics.
Although there is still a long way to go, I feel my work, along with that of many passionate researchers like me, may give a contribution, even if small, to the whole society as health is one of the most important things for all of us. And, if awareness of the weapons available to fight this war grows, confidence in research and novel therapies will grow as well.
I am a Ph.D. student in a different country from my home. I would not have thought I would have been here, doing what I am currently doing. Sometimes, it is tough. But, if someone would ask me, I will answer: “Yes, I made the right choice”.
When we receive conventional drugs in our body, they have a chance to interfere with different parts of the body eventually causing some undesired effects. Meet Mr. Smith, fictional character of my story. He is diagnosed with mesothelioma after so many years working in construction sector, exposed to a natural mineral called asbestos and developed this organ-lining cancer in his abdomen. Unfortunately, doctors say he is not eligible to the surgical removal, and they are trying a lot of chemotherapy drugs to cope with the tumor. Highly toxic chemotherapeutic drugs are used to kill the cancer cells like in Mr. Smith’s situation, but side effects are very harsh and hard to avoid. Mr. Smith has now developed hair loss, nausea, vomiting, anemia, he lost some weight, and his immune system has weakened because he had to take toxic drugs regularly to treat his cancer. Can these side effects be reduced while treating the disease in more efficient way? Antibody-mediated smart drugs are designed to target only the cancer cells binding to the special proteins that exist on the cancer cells but not on the healthy cells. Therefore, we can get rid of the toxic effect to the healthy cells if this powerful drug system is introduced to the market and safely available for patients like Mr. Smith. I would like to further develop those kinds of smart drugs to exploit their potential with more efficient treatment directly to the cancer and less side effects. So, no cancer patient should suffer the nasty side effects of toxic drugs and could increase their life standards while treatment. I am using mouse models to do my experiments. I try to improve the chemistry behind the scenes, which determines when and where the toxic drug acts, and investigate what happens to the drug afterwards in the mouse. There are different strategies to look into with those smart drugs and in the future, I hope Mr. Smith to heal effectively with less problems.
Today I am meeting with my good friend Anna at a coffee place. She has very exciting news: she is pregnant! Anna tells me that she is very excited about the new life that grows inside of her and that it feels like a miracle. She also explains to me that she decided to stop drinking alcohol and coffee. I advise her to also be careful with catching any infectious diseases. If she would get infected with for example a virus and her immune system gets heavily activated, a mass of inflammatory molecules get released and could influence the brain development of her unborn child. I explained to her that this is a potential risk factor for her child to develop a mental disorder as for example schizophrenia or epilepsy later in life. The miracle of the development of a new life is a highly complex process that is not well understood and were many things can go wrong. I am explaining to Anna that in my research I am trying to better understand which specific cell types and pathways in the developing brain are affected upon maternal immune system activation. To achieve that I use a highly advanced method that allows us to look at the gene expression of thousands of single cells instead of mixing all the cells of the brain together and just looking at the overall gene expression. I am telling Anna that this is comparable to the fruit smoothie she just ordered: the single-cell technique allows me to find out with specific fruits are in the smoothie instead of just tasting them all together. With this research I aim to identify specific cell-types that are interesting targets for further studies investigating therapeutic interventions for neurodevelopmental disorders.
I still remember, when I was growing up, I usually followed my mom to her workplace. She is a pediatrician and worked in a big Childrens Hospital in Vietnam. I saw lots of kids coming in to the hospital crying out loud, and I found it very annoying at first (I was very quiet as a child). I then asked mom, why she chose such a tiring job, and she said it was because she loved children. She loves other children as she loves me.
With the passion to protect children’s health inherited from mom, I decide to pursue a career as a scientist for pediatric cancer. I am currently working with Hepatoblastoma, which is the most common cancer in children, especially in children under 5 years old. Although the disease is rare, numbers are rising every year and the survival rate is low for children who cannot have their tumor removed by surgery. Unfortunately, very little is known about this type of illness. In order to save more children, we must identify what is the origin cell and which genetic mutations drive the disease. In my project, I am trying to generate a disease model in a mouse by genome editing. By making such a model, which is representative of patient tumors, we will be able to identify which mutations lead to the disease; thereby allows us to test potential drugs.
This is a difficult task, as many things related to Hepatoblastpoma are not well understood. However, I am confident that I can contribute something to unveil the mystery of this childhood cancer.
“Once upon a time, I was sitting on the attic of my grandparents and found one of these old radios. I was so curious, if it worked or not. So, I turned it on, but the only thing which came out was a really annoying noise. I was very disappointed. But then I realized that the radio was missing its antenna, and therefore didn't get a proper signal.
Right now, I am working as a scientist on cancer cells in the bile duct. Your bile duct is a very important organ for the digestion of our food. I was so enthusiastic, when I realized that cancer cells in the bile duct are similar to the radio I found on the attic of my grandparents, when I was a child. These cancer cells lost their antenna and do not get a proper signal from their environment. The program of these cells is chaotic and not connected to the signals they get from their surroundings. These cells are out of control and keep on growing. If we understand, why these cells lost their antenna we will be able to repair it and listen to music again. In my research, I revealed a potential mechanism of why normal cells lose their antenna and want to decipher the noise of cells without antenna. Based on this knowledge we are hopefully able to give the cells the antenna back and treat the cancer. For a clear radio signal!!”
Long, long time ago (but also right now) the happy land called the Bodyland was full of happy little citizens called Cells. The little fellows lived stress-free, doing their little jobs. Some of the Cells worked their lands of digested food to obtain valuable minerals, others moved the minerals around the land from one place to the other, some moved the news from the king to its subjects and some of them called Immunus just made sure that the order was kept by removing trash or protecting the land from invaders.
However, one day one of the citizens called the Cancerus got exposed to too much chemical waste and sun and started acting odd. He was talking about how the system is wrong and convincing more cells to join him on the crusade to overtake their little land. Obviously, the Immunus weren’t very happy about that, but the bad Cancerus and his fellows were a very convincing and corrupted bunch and they turned some of the Immunus to even help them rather than stop them. The Bodyland was in grave danger.
The brave and honourable group of crusaders called the Scientistus started working on the solution to stop Cancerus' rebellion that kept on growing. The Scientistus had tools and brains that inspired them to look deeper into why the Cancerus’ rebellion was so successful. After years of great efforts, exhausting battles, tricky espionage and great sacrifice they were tired but knew more about what had distinguished Cancerus from other Cells. He was using the Scissors of Destiny called ADAMs. They were powerful tools that could cut any other tools, armours or clothes that were on their surface or on the surrounding Cells. Cancerus had plenty of those ADAMS and same applied to his fellow rebels. Scientistus noticed that the Cancerus’ rebels had more ADAMs than other Cells, but what was he using them for? Were they used to disguise themselves among regular Cells? Were they cutting the valuable materials called Cytokins to pay off the Immunus and help them overrule the Bodyland’s righteous rulers?
The Scientistus decided to go on one more odyssey to find that out. They decided to look at the little pieces that the Cancerus’ rebels were cutting of using ADAMs. To do that, they apprehended some arrested rebels (called Cellian Linus) and putting them in world renowned jail (PetriDish castle) with the Immunus. The Cellian Linus and Immunus were unaware that they were being observed by the Scientistus. The smart crusaders were looking at what little pieces Cellian Linus were cutting using the all-powerful ADAMs.
What have the Scientistus found? How can they use their newly found knowledge about ADAMs? Are the ADAMs really the ultimate Cancerus weapon? These are the mysteries that will be unravelled in the next story. To be continued…
For a few days, Mr. Bear hasn’t felt very well. He has been very tired and doesn’t want to do much.
Mrs Bear is worried about him and decides to take him to the doctor. The doctor asks many questions and examines Mr. Bear before taking some blood. On the following day, the doctor knows why Mr Bear is so tired. He has something called leukaemia.
“Leukaemia? I have never heard of it”, wonders Mr. Bear.
“Well”, explains the doctor. “Usually, your blood is maintained by some special cells that live within your bones, which are the mothers of all blood cells. Their only job is to make sure that you have enough blood cells at all times and if there aren’t, the mothers will divide and produce more blood cells, their children. Sometimes, the mother cells don’t do their job properly, which is this leukaemia. The mothers are producing to many children, which are not growing up, but stay little babies instead. This means that you are not able to get new blood cells anymore. Your blood is sick.”
“What can I do against it?”, asks Mr Bear.
“It is very hard to fight the mother cells that don’t do their job anymore. We can give you a medicine, but this medicine will destroy all your blood cells: the healthy and the bad ones. With other words, you won’t have mother cells that can produce healthy children anymore.”
“How can I get these back?”, worried Mr. Bear.
“The mother cells are different in every person. We need to get the right ones so they will settle without any problems. Do you have some family relatives like parents or children?”, asked the doctor.
“No”, answered Mr. Bear with a sad voice. “only my wife, Mrs Bear.”
“Well, then we can still see if we find the right cells in a donor bank. Volunteers can say that they would give some of their cells to sick patients like you, but finding the right ones is quite hard.”
“Isn’t there any other possibility?”, worried Mrs. Bear.
“We can first give you a mild medicine to fight the bad cells. Then, we get mother cells from you bone and give you the strong medicament to make sure that all bad cells are gone. Finally, we give you the mother cells back into the bone. There is just a problem”, explained the doctor.
“What is it?”, worried Mrs Bear.
“Well, a few bad cells might hide among the cells we get out of you ang then give back to you. So, you might get sick again.”
“Can’t we see which cells are good or bad?”, wondered Mr. Bear.
“Not yet”, answered the doctor. “To distinguish blood cells from each other, we have to look at them. Some cells always wear glasses, other cells always wear boots, etc. Healthy and ill mother cells look very similar. We now want to find something that distinguished them, so that we can separate the cells from each other and give you the right ones back. If we know for example that only healthy mother cells wear a watch, but not the bad ones, then we can isolate cells with a watch and give only these back to you.”
“And in that case, I could get healthy?”
“With that, we could reduce the risk of you getting sick again.”
“That would be wonderful. Too bad that we can’t do this already now”
Hello everyone. Meet Ada!
Ada is here to tell all of us a very interesting story from her childhood. So, are you all up for walking down with her in her memory lane?
It’s year 2003. Today, Ada is only 5 weeks old and her parents are taking her to a doctor in the nearby hospital. Ada has had fever since yesterday and looks very dull. Doctors did a quick examination of her body and now they want to run a blood test to see if they can assess the problem.
The doctors’ are amazed to look at Ada’s blood color. It is surprisingly pinkish-white instead of the usual bright red. Blood analysis report reveals that Ada is having very high amount of lipids in her blood. This condition is known as Hypertriglyceridemia. The doctors talk to various scientists to find out what exactly caused this abnormality in her body.
The scientists and doctors together solved this mystery and presented the following explanation for Ada’s condition:
We all know that we need to eat food in order to have energy to do any work. Dietary components can be broadly classified into three categories, namely carbohydrate, protein and lipids (or fats).
It was the third component that Ada’s body was not able to metabolize which means that her body couldn’t use lipids to produce energy. Hence, these lipids kept piling up in her body and let to pinkish-white color of the blood.
They found that a particular protein, which is required for a normal metabolism of lipids, was having a different kind of structure in Ada’s body and hence could not perform its usual function. However, Ada’s parents were very happy to know that there was preventive measure that can help Ada with her condition. They suggested lipid-deficient diet for Ada in order to prevent the symptoms.
No lipid-----No pile up----No abnormal symptoms.
Ada’s story is a classic example of a disease where prevention is the only available cure.
I am currently working with lipids. So many different proteins present in our body are involved in lipid metabolism. Sometimes mutations lead to a change in structure and function of these proteins leading to disease development. Other scientists working in this field have reported a number of diseases (e.g. coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis etc.) that arise when there is a change in the normal processing of lipids in our body.
In my group, we are trying to understand the structure and precise functions of these proteins in order to understand what exact role these proteins play in lipid metabolism in healthy individuals. These studies would help in understanding the basic metabolism of lipids and hence would provide a basis for development of relevant treatments against the diseases that arise due to change in structure of these proteins.
I moved to Denmark to do my PhD and last December 2019 was my first Christmas here and I was amazed at how much Danes love Juletide season. One of the things I couldn’t forget was a classic Danish tradition which is making a paper ornaments to be hang in the Christmas tree. Essentially, you take a piece of paper, and with some sophisticated foldings you could transform the very same paper to create an ornament in the form of a star or a heart.
In a way, the human body works this way, our bodies have a paper blueprint called the DNA that encodes all the qualities that are unique to us. The same blueprint exist in our hair, our skin or our eyes, but it is folded different such that the paper blueprint transforms the form and identities of our cells.
For my PhD, I am interested in how the DNA blueprint is folded and how it affects the identities of our cells. How this very folding mechanism influences how the cell normally behaves or when it misbehaves, such as in cancer. To answer this question, I use intestinal epithelium as a system to dissect the different folding patterns that exist in the different cellular identities that make up this organ. To complement this approach, we can use powerful computational algorithms that can map the entirety of this folding and giving us a 3D- real life version of our DNA blueprint. From there, we can have some informative knowledge about how specific folding patterns make cells more susceptible to dysfunctional transcription and consequently alter their form or function, such as in cancer where cells divide uncontrollably. Having a basic understanding how the DNA origami folding happens gives us way to maybe repair and unfold, so in the end, we can restore and create origamis that are proportionally folded to create ornaments with proper form that we can hang in our Christmas trees.