Tag: Women in science

Beyond survival: Why cancer survivorship matters

Professor Pernilla Lagergren

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

When cancer treatment ends, a new journey begins—one filled with unique challenges. Professor Pernilla Lagergren, Chair in Surgical Care Sciences at the Department of Surgery and Cancer, explores what life is like after cancer treatment. Drawing on her clinical experience with oesphageal and gastric cancer patients, she shares how her survivorship research is helping to shape better outcomes for patients, their families, and the healthcare system. 

When people think about cancer, they often focus on the illness itself—the diagnosis, the treatments, and the fight to survive. But once the treatment ends, another important challenge begins: what happens after cancer? As a researcher in cancer survivorship, my focus is on understanding what life is like for people who have been treated for cancer, and how we can improve that life for them. 

Here, I’ll explore the significance of cancer survivorship research, the insights we’ve gained, and what drives my commitment to this field. I‘ll also highlight how my work contributes to improving the lives of cancer survivors, supporting their families, and strengthening the healthcare system. 

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When science meets serendipity: How accidental discoveries could revolutionise women’s health

Professor Aylin Hanyaloglu

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

Aylin Hanyaloglu, Professor in Molecular Medicine in the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, reflects on the role of serendipity in both scientific discovery and her own 17-year research career at Imperial. She explores how unexpected findings—like those in her team’s research on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)—can lead to breakthroughs that shape the future of medicine. From fertility treatments to the quest for more precise drugs, Aylin discusses how curiosity and embracing the unexpected have driven her team’s progress.

Serendipity—the fact of finding valuable or interesting things by chance—has long been a key element in scientific research. This is exemplified by Sir Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin, which revolutionised medicine: “I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident.” With this definition, serendipity for me has played a significant role in both the discoveries in our research as well as my career journey. This time of year offers opportunities to reflect on different areas in our lives, and I have often used the term serendipity for describing my journey. But what do I mean by this? Is it needed or just a normal part of the discovery process? And with the rapidly evolving landscape of how science is conducted, will this continue? 

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Completing the jigsaw: can milk banks contribute to transformed perinatal health in the UK?

Dr Natalie Shenker MBE

This week marks World Breastfeeding Week, a global campaign dedicated to informing, engaging, and galvanising action on breastfeeding and related issues. Dr Natalie Shenker MBE from the Department of Surgery and Cancer reflects on the progress made in related maternal health research in 2024, and explores how milk banks can help in the much-needed transformation of perinatal healthcare in the UK.

2024 has already been a remarkable year for human milk and lactation science. As interest grows globally in the sector, our understanding of the complex and ancient evolutionary physiological strategies involved, and their impact on infant and maternal health, deepens. The maternal health impacts of lactation and how to best support families are the key focuses of my research, and like much of the work across women’s health, has been largely ignored by mainstream science.  

In partnership with The George Institute, the new Women’s Health Network at Imperial College London is seeking to correct these crucial gaps. Excitingly, our study into the mechanisms through which breastfeeding can reduce the risk of certain types of cancer has received further funding from Breast Cancer Now. Yet, there is still so much to discover. Just last month an entirely new hormonal response that explains how breastfeeding protects against osteoporosis was described by scientists at UC Davis. They found bone metabolism increases during lactation to keep up with the large amount of calcium required to produce milk, at the same time as levels of the protective hormone oestrogen fall. Scientists were therefore previously stumped as to how breastfeeding prevents rather than causes maternal osteoporosis. The work, published in Nature, found that during breastfeeding, certain neurons in the brain called KISS1 neurons release a protein called CCN3. This protein helps increase bone repair, boosts the activity of skeletal stem cell activity and even speeds up how quickly fractures repair.

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Team Science Leads the Way – But Hero Science Still Looms Large

Artwork by Mengmeng Tu, MSc Science Communication student

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

When it comes to tackling the world’s biggest health challenges, teamwork makes the dream work for Professor Wiebke Arlt, Director of the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS). Here, she discusses why it’s time that contemporary science shifted from a hero science to a team science approach – one based on productive collaboration rather than wasteful competition.

Going it alone is often glorified as the breakthrough way of achieving major milestones. However, if you look closely, most of these are achieved in a team effort and not by single individuals. Our perception of heroes rather than teams is often driven by the narrative and not the facts: when I was a child, I learnt that Edmund Hillary was the first to climb the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. Now I know that Hillary achieved this feat together with the Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. Reading up on it, I discovered that they didn’t walk up the mountain on their own, but they were part of a large expedition team that worked together to achieve the goal. Hillary and Norgay were the second pair to be deployed as part of a systematic team approach to conquering the mountain.

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Embracing Ubuntu in Higher Education: The Power of Togetherness

Artwork by Mengmeng Tu, MSc Science Communication student

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

Ubuntu (ooh-bun-too) is a concept, a philosophy, a way of living in Africa. It highlights the interconnectedness of all individuals and encourages people to recognise their shared humanity. Here, Dr Sungano Chigogora, Senior Teaching Fellow in Epidemiology in the School of Public Health, explores the spirit of Ubuntu and why it should be at the heart of teaching and learning.

In Central and Southern Africa, Bantu means ‘people’ or ‘humanity’ to hundreds of millions of individuals whose languages have common ethnolinguistic roots. To them, Ubuntu is a core characteristic of humanity that extends beyond the individual, and recognises not only their humanity, but how they belong to a deep community in which they can participate, share, and grow. As observed by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks to the very essence of being human. … to give high praise to someone we say … ‘he or she has Ubuntu’. This means that they are generous, hospitable, friendly, caring, and compassionate” (Tutu, 1999).

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Closing the Gender Health Gap: A Call for Sex and Gender Equity in Biomedical Research Policies

When it comes to healthcare, there are clear and stark inequalities between women and men. Marina Politis, Alice Witt, and Kate Womersley explain how, at its root, this gender health gap derives from a research and data gap, and how the MESSAGE project is working to improve accounting of sex and gender dimensions in medical research.

Everyone aspires to receive gold standard treatment when seeking medical care. What if, however, this standard, was only ever set out to be gold for one group of people? Much of our medical evidence base has been based on a male norm, with women underrepresented at all stages of the research pipeline. Subsequently, when a woman suffers an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, she is less likely to receive bystander CPR than a man. Once in the hospital, she continues to be less likely to receive optimal care than her male counterpart.

The gender health gap in cardiovascular disease – poorer outcomes women experience due to the “male default” in health research and healthcare – is just one of many conditions for which there are disparities between women and men. From dementia to diabetes, and osteoporosis to obesity, sex and gender differences and similarities remain neglected in UK and international research.

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Getting to the Heart of the Matter: Sex Differences in Cardiomyopathy

Artwork by Mengmeng Tu, MSc Science Communication student

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

Could variation in the architecture of men and women’s hearts explain why their risk of cardiomyopathy differs? Dr Paz Tayal, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute is investigating this with the aim of improving outcomes for patients affected by this disease of the heart muscle. Dr Tayal also discusses the ‘juggle struggle’ of balancing work and family life, and the importance of truth telling in academic medicine.

As winter sets in, I start to pack away the summer dresses and bring out the woolly jumpers and sturdy boots. When I do this, I will not be going into my husband’s closet to find things that fit me, nor indeed will I be wearing his shoes.

That seems obvious right, because we are different sizes.

We don’t think twice about that, yet in medicine, we are only just beginning to realise that male and female patients might need to have tailored ways to diagnose and treat disease.

Even in health, male and female hearts are not the same. At birth, the hearts of male and female babies are about the same size. However, at puberty, male hearts have a faster period of growth compared to female hearts. Whilst this eventually settles down, throughout adult life the mismatch persists, and the female heart remains smaller.

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From Paris to London, via The Gambia—my journey as a clinician scientist

Prof Maud Lemoine with key collaborators, including Dr Yusuke Shimakawa and Dr Gibril Ndow
Prof Maud Lemoine with key collaborators, including Dr Yusuke Shimakawa and Dr Gibril Ndow

On the national day of France—known as ‘Bastille Day’ in English—we hear from Prof Maud Lemoine, Professor and Honorary Consultant in Hepatology at Imperial’s Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction. She completed her medical degree and PhD in Paris, France, before working in The Gambia, and then the UK  

What brought you to London, and Imperial?

Initially I came a bit by chance. I was working in a teaching hospital in Paris as a full-time clinical consultant, having completed a PhD in physiopathology of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I wanted to work abroad and was very interested in working on viral hepatitis and liver cancer in sub-Saharan Africa. I wanted to work in a non-French speaking environment and meet other cultures. In 2011, by chance, I met Prof Mark Thursz who gave me the opportunity to join his team. I spent about 2 years and a half in The Gambia where I implemented a very ambitious research programme on liver diseases in West Africa. Then, in 2014, I moved to London. I hadn’t planned to move to London, but then I discovered a different culture—where I was given so many more opportunities than I’d have in the French system. I was extremely motivated but more importantly I felt really supported by Imperial and my department to develop my ambitions and create my own research group. I do still miss the French system from which I have learnt a lot.

I was initially going to spend a year or two as a lecturer at Imperial, but then I secured more funding to expand my research activities and really enjoyed the work environment and its management based on trust and creativity—especially as it’s much more diverse here. There are so many different nationalities represented in our department, it’s really nice.

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Academic Women Association: a new women network at Imperial

Academic Women Association

How can we close the gender gap in STEM? Dr Ilaria Belluomo explores how a new network at Imperial aims to provide a safe space for women to discuss and plan their careers in leadership roles – in and outside academia.

We are all aware of the disparity between the number of men and women in senior academic positions, as well as the limited number of female mentors available to support and inspire young girls interested in pursuing a career in science. This small percentage of female representation can give the impression that a career in science and academia, in the current climate, can be difficult and hard for women to pursue. Things are slowly improving, but we are only at the beginning of initiating this change. We continue to have conversations and work on initiatives to ensure that the academic gender gap can be improved.

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World AIDS Day: We have come a very long way but there is still much to do to protect those at risk

Professor Sarah Fidler

This festive period Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

While HIV is no longer the death sentence that it once was, lifelong treatment is still required and there is no cure – yet. Professor Sarah Fidler from the Department of Infectious Disease discusses how a new type of HIV treatment holds promise as a longer-lasting alternative to current complex drug regimens.

Despite extraordinary political and medical advances, HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, remains one of the world’s most serious public health challenges. Since its discovery in 1983 by researchers at the Pasteur Institute in France, 84 million people worldwide are estimated to have become HIV-positive and 40 million people have died from an HIV-related illness. Today, there are around 38 million people living with HIV globally, with 1.5 million new infections in 2021.

Advocacy and close collaboration between clinicians, scientists and the HIV-affected community has inspired and driven the research and drug development and access agenda. Without these close working relationships, the development of HIV treatments would have been markedly slower and many more lives would have been lost.

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