Today is International Women's Day, so CLAIRE O'CONNELLcatches up with some of the women around Ireland who are researching various aspects of biology and medicine – from what makes our bones strong enough to support us, to how to prevent a heart attack, detect pregnancy complications, understand our immune system, and prevent and treat cancer
Dr Laoise McNamara: What makes bones strong?
HOW DO YOUR bones grow strong enough to support you? Dr Laoise McNamara has always been fascinated by how things work, so she’s combining engineering and biology to understand how biological cells, including bone cells, react to mechanical forces.
“We want to understand precisely how cells sense and respond to different forces, and whether this normal response changes during disease,” explains McNamara, a Science Foundation Ireland Stokes lecturer in biomedical engineering at NUI Galway.
“Ultimately we want to develop new treatment approaches for diseases such as osteoporosis.”
She recently secured a prestigious European Research Council grant to analyse how bone cells respond to mechanical forces and shed light on how to grow bone tissue in the lab.
“I find the biomedical research environment incredibly compelling. I have the freedom to define research questions that I find challenging and relevant to human health.”
Dr Sharon Glynn: Banking on better prostate treatments
WHEN DR Sharon Glynn was researching breast cancer in the US, she started to pick up on similarities at the cellular level with prostate cancer.
It’s a line of work she’s continuing now as director of laboratory research at the Prostate Cancer Institute, NUI Galway.
“My interest was in hormone- negative breast cancer, which was particularly aggressive,” she explains.
“As I read more about prostate cancer, I was starting to realise that the prostate cancer that men die from is the hormonal negative prostate cancer too.
“They seem to be so similar – there are a lot of common pathways and even risk factors – and to me that’s really exciting.”
Glynn is also setting up a prostate cancer “biobank” where patients can donate leftover samples from tumours after surgery.
Having this valuable tissue will help researchers develop new treatment approaches, and build up our knowledge over time of risk factors and cancer prevention. She is currently looking at how a molecule originally developed to treat brain disease might also be able to reactivate the body’s own cellular machinery to fight prostate cancer, and the institute has received support from the Galway University Foundation.
Curiosity helps to keep her going through the highs and lows of research, she says. “I really can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”
Prof Louise Kenny: Spotting pregnancy complications early
PROF LOUISE Kenny decided to specialise in obstetrics the moment she saw a baby being delivered for the first time during her medical training.
Later, as a junior doctor, she realised there is still much we don’t understand about why pregnancies sometimes don’t go according to plan.
“The loss of a pregnancy and a baby has a profoundly devastating effect on a woman and a family, and I was struck by how little we know and how little progress has been made,” says Kenny, who is now professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at University College Cork.
Today, she leads research in Scope, an international clinical study that uses metabolomics – a combination of advanced chemistry and mathematical modelling – to develop predictive tests for pregnancy complications such as pre-eclampsia, growth restriction and pre-term birth.
“These three conditions account for the majority of neonatal admissions and sadly neonatal deaths,” says Kenny, a Health Research Board clinician scientist and Science Foundation Ireland principal investigator.
“Being able to predict who is at risk in early pregnancy would be a huge step forward – we could concentrate emerging novel therapies on those at greatest risk.”
Last year, Scope made a breakthrough. “We now have identified a set of [biochemical] markers that we think will form the basis of a clinical early pregnancy test for pre-eclampsia.”
And Kenny still delivers babies. “[That] still moves me as much today as it did nearly 20 years ago as a student. To be a part of what is thankfully often the best day of someone’s life is a privilege and a joy.
“Similarly, witnessing the pain, loss and almost unbearable grief of losing a baby is a strong motivation,” Kenny adds.
Prof Cliona O’Farrelly: Secret immune power
AS A SCIENCE student, watching immune cells eat bacteria got Cliona O’Farrelly hooked on immunology and she signed up for research.
“I just loved the way those cells could act so quickly, sensing bacteria, moving towards them and gobbling them up,” she recalls. “I wanted to find out more about the whole immune system.”
Since then her research at St Vincent’s University Hospital has identified immune cells called lymphocytes in the healthy liver, where no one thought they were.
“We were among the first to prove that they really exist and to characterise them,” says O’Farrelly, who is now professor of comparative immunology at Trinity College Dublin.
“These are really versatile, powerful cells, they are very important for dealing with infection and cancer in the liver. And we’re now finding that liver immune cells are potent anti-tumour cells and that they may actually control fat metabolism.”
The thrill of discovery keeps her interest fuelled. “Every so often you discover something new that nobody else knew before,” says O’Farrelly, whose work is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the Health Research Board.
“And I really do believe that one day it will be possible to discover precisely why someone’s immune system is faulty and allows a virus or a tumour to grow, and that we will be able to replace or override that faulty component. We have already discovered that the hepatitis C virus blocks the immune response in some individuals, making them susceptible to chronic infection.”
Prof Alice Stanton: Keeping hearts healthy
‘I’M INTERESTED in keeping people as healthy as possible for as long as possible,” says cardiovascular researcher Prof Alice Stanton.
A big issue in the field is that many at-risk patients don’t take the medication they should to help protect their heart and blood vessels.
So she is working with the Umpire “polypill” trial, which is recruiting 2,000 patients in Europe and India and combines several medications – two blood-pressure lowering agents, a cholesterol-lowering agent and aspirin – in one capsule.
“The vast majority of people who have had either a heart attack or stroke, or who are at high cardiovascular risk, should be on those four drugs, and combining the drugs into one capsule makes it both easier and cheaper for the patients,” says Stanton, an associate professor of molecular and cellular therapeutics at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
She is also involved in a project that’s figuring out whether you can identify the best blood-pressure lowering medicine to give a patient by looking at their genes. Her work receives funding from the EU, the Irish Heart Foundation, the Health Research Board and Enterprise Ireland.
Volunteers interested in taking part in the Umpire trial can phone 01-8092862 or e-mail adapt@beaumont.ie
