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.