Meet the scientists!

I’m from Scotland and I’ve been living in Edinburgh for 7 years. I’m 25 years old, I have a puppy called Banjo, I like motorbikes and music, and I’m doing a PhD in Cancer Research. Here is a picture of Banjo. He is a labradoodle.

I’ve learnt a lot about cancer, how people get it and about treatments such as chemotherapy so feel free to ask me anything. I’ve lost people I care about to cancer and my research means a lot to me.

For the past 2 years I have been making chemicals that we can use as tools to help us study cancer and understand it better. I’ve been using lots of different dyes and fluorescence, and trying different ways to “tag” biomolecules so we can discover what they really do in a person’s body. The biomolecules I study are made of sugar, and it’s funny because most people think of their bodies as being made of protein but actually sugars are one of the main building blocks for life! Even your DNA contains sugar molecules.

I’m hoping that my research could lead to a diagnostic blood test to catch people that have cancer in the early stages, to get them treated as soon as possible. In many cases, cancer can spread in someone’s body without them knowing it and by the time they get really ill it can be too late to give them effective treatment.

I am studying these chemicals that are present in tumours in really high concentrations. They are called growth factors and they cause the cancer to grow and spread really quickly. These growth factors leak out of the tumour and float down the person’s bloodstream. Scientists sometimes call them “Tumour Biomarkers”. I’m trying to make a dye and when it recognises the Biomarker, it will become fluorescent. So all the doctor will have to do, is add my dye to the patient’s blood sample and if it glows, then this means the patient has cancer. So hopefully this will be a really quick and easy test to help catch cancer early!

This is a picture of a lung cancer cell under the microscope! Lung cancer is one fo the most agressive cancers and spreads quickly through the person’s body. Lung cancer is the biggest killer in this country and it’s a shame because 90% of all lung cancers is caused by smoking.

Here are links to my research video that I made last week. It’s available on youtube and vimeo. If you can’t access these websites, please ask your teacher!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG3EMByh11g

I get up at 7 am and go for a walk or a jog with my puppy Banjo. I’ve been training for a run that I’m doing on the 19th of June called the Race For Life. It’s to fundraise for Cancer Research UK who sponsor my work and also it’s my way of saying “thank you” to all the amazing people who fundraise for Cancer Research and pay for research like mine. I literally couldn’t do my work without them, and it’s good inspiration to keep me motivated and work hard.

I ride my motorbike to work and try to get there for around 10 am. Then I get my lab coat on, my safety specs, some gloves, roll up my fumehood window, turn the light on and get started!

I usually put a reaction on first thing in the morning and monitor its progress throughout the day. I try to take breaks at 11 am, 1 pm and 3pm. But sometimes I get caught up in my work and skip them. I make ‘To Do’ lists and tick things off as I do them and if there’s anythying left at the end of the day, that’s where I start the next day.

I monitor my reactions by NMR (which is the same idea as an MRI scan). Basically it involves putting your samples into a magnet the size of a small elephant! You have to be careful if you are wearing metals because they can stick to the magnet!!

At the end of the day, I freeze-dry my samples. People use freeze driers to dry food to take into space and also it’s how they make coffee granules. The freeze drier works by sucking all the water out of your samples with a vacuum. But first you have to freeze it with liquid nitrogen which is about -196 degrees C. It’s so cold that if it touches your skin for too long it can give you a nasty cold burn.

In the evenings, I hang out with my friends and Banjo. Work can be stressful so it’s good to chill out! My house is seriously messy because I hardly ever clean. When you work hard all day, the last thing you want to do when you get home is do the dishes! I usually get home around 6 pm but sometimes I work late.

So I’m doing a scholarship in Science Communication where I go to Science Festivals (like the Edinburgh International Science Festival) and secondary schools and run workshops and activities about the work that I do.

http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/

Cancer has affected so many families and it means a lot to me to go and meet people and teach them about Cancer and Cancer Research. Especially because a lot of people donate to Cancer Research UK and they have no idea that their money goes to pay for chemicals and equipment in labs like mine. And research is really expensive. It costs £10 for a lab coat!

In my workshop there are lots of hands-on activities for students to do including a fake blood test where the students get some fake blood samples and then they add my special dye. Then they can test their samples for fluorescence and diagnose their patients. You can watch this video if you would like to see how the experiment works:

I believe that these activities should be free to all and this means that I borrow the equipment from lots of different labs at the University and then pay for the rest of the materials myself. This means I can’t afford to run many workshops and for this reason I have only done 7 this year. I think that the prize money could help me run up to 50 more workshops in lots of different schools. Even things like colour printing can be really expensive when you add it all up but I want to be able to give the students things that they can take home with them so they can remember the workshop and tell their families about it.

I also want to turn my activities into an electronic resource that teachers can download so they can do these activities themselves in the classroom, and then students all over the country will be able to learn about Cancer Research.

Here is a picture of me at the Edinburgh International Science Festival in April, showing people what cancer cells look like under the microscope and how a biopsy works:

Here are links to a demo of one of the experiments you can do in my workshop. It’s on youtube and vimeo – if you can’t access these websites, please ask your teacher!