Nanoscience

Hello, by chance or design you have stumbled upon another of our Crucible podcasts
focused on the European Crucible and sometimes on the Scottish Crucible and sometimes
on a combination of the two.

But today we're particularly focusing on the 2021
European Crucible and two of the participants in that who are both part of a
project that also has some other team members who aren't joining us today but we'll
get on to all that later.

I'm going to get our two participants to introduce
themselves. I'm going to start with Zahra.

I'm Zahra Rattray and I'm a senior
lecturer in the pharmacy and biomedical sciences at the University of Strathclyde. And
I was part of the Scottish cohort in the Scottish EU crucible.

Excellent.

And our other participant who is slightly less Scottish is Jessica Steinlechner.

So
I'm slightly less Scottish, but I've actually worked and lived a few years in
Scotland, so I'm maybe 10 % Scottish, but now I am based at Maastricht University in
the Netherlands where I am working on gravitational waves and specifically on the
development of mirrors for detecting these waves.

Good, we're gonna get on to that,
but first, Zara, you were 2021 crucible, so where were you at in your career right
then?

So I I actually write at the start of my academic career. In September,
2018, I joined the University of Strathclyde as a new academic as a Chancellor's
Research Fellow. And in 2021, I was kind of in that position of really starting up
my research team and laboratory and just really trying to define an identity in
terms of my research team and where we were going at that point in time.

And with
all that going on what made you think you also had time to take part in this
strange thing called European crucible?

That's actually a really good valid question there. I think actually as an academic
it's really important to have a very strong network so as you may have guessed from
my accent I'm not from Scotland I'm English and because of that I didn't know very
many people in Scotland when I first moved to Glasgow so I thought taking parts in
the crucible would be a great opportunity to really expand and diversify my network
and not only just people within my own field and sector but to actually be able to
meet new people from across Scotland and Europe to really build and develop that
network further because science in this day and age really is based around team
science and working within large groups and networks and it really actually helps
with that aspect quite a lot. So your principal aim was just to meet people and
maybe some like -minded people? Exactly, like -minded people and to really take me out
of my comfort zone to some extent as well by considering how other disciplines can
contribute to my research and how I can bring something new to other fields and
disciplines as well. -

Jessica, same question for you. Where were you at when you
joined Crucible and why did you join it?

- In early 2021, I was dressed relatively
new at Master's University where I got my first permanent position in fall 2019.
So it was dressed a bit over a year, but it seemed shorter during a down where
you actually don't see so much of the place where you're working at. I think that
was also part of why I was interested in joining European Crucible because it was a
good way of connecting to people outside my very close circle of people during this
lockdown period where it was not so easy to meet new colleagues, new collaborators.
Fast forwarding to now, you've mentioned already about gravitational waves.

Tell us a little bit more about what you're doing, because there's this lovely
phrase that's used around some of your work, which I'd never heard before of "quiet
mirrors."

Yeah, gravitational waves are a way to find out more about our universe
and to see dark objects which we otherwise cannot see, such as black holes. And to
detect those gravitational waves, we build very sensitive optical instruments and those
are actually sensitive to vibrations on an atomic level. So this means that the
mirrors I have to develop have to be very quiet in terms of they shouldn't have
any kind of vibrations on an atomic or molecular level and my work actually is
material to research but with an astrophysics application.

- I can see why a new type of coating that is less prone to noise would be desirable, but where are you
at with the actual creation of that material?

- Oh, that is a tricky question because there's not just one coating and there's not just one detector.
So there is a whole network across the world and they all have different
requirements and I'm working a little bit for all of them. Right. So in fact,
they're all bespoke projects, so you need to design a coding differently for each
particular set of requirements. Kind of, yes. I like the kind of, it sort of
implies you haven't quite got this, but it's close enough that I'm not going to
argue. Okay, I won't push it even more. Zahra, what about where you are now and
what you're up to now? Yeah, that's a good question. I asked myself that question
some days as well. So what we're really interested in in my research team is
developing new medicines and we take a lot of inspiration from nature and what
happens in nature to develop new drugs but a key element of knowing whether a new
drug is effective and it's working appropriately is being able to measure it. So at
the moment I've got a strong team of 11 11 PhD students under technician and a
postdoc about to join us and they're each focusing on different elements. So some
are, for example, looking at the COVID vaccine components that we used and how we
could actually potentially engineer and use these in other disease areas and
applications such as cancer. Some of my other groups are engineering a type of drug
which is known as an antibody and looking at how can we effectively engineer these
to be easier to inject for patients in the home setting or how can we make them
more effective in targeting cancer as an immunotherapy. Now medicine is not my long
suit, we produce our own antibodies don't we? Are you talking about artificial
antibodies or tweaking existing ones that we produce naturally? That's a great
question there, so we all naturally use and produce antibodies for different immune
functions as part of our body's immune system. And what we essentially do is we
take inspiration from the natural antibody structure that we have existing within our
own bodies and we engineer components of that antibody to attack, let's say, tumor
cells or unhealthy tissue to essentially eliminate it. And This kind of carries
advantages over using small molecule drugs, for example, like a lot of the cancer
chemotherapies are based on small molecules and they have really severe side effects,
such as alopecia, which is hair loss, or gastric side effects, such as diarrhea and
vomiting. With antibodies, we can actually overcome some of those limitations because
the body doesn't have the same type of response. - Now, anybody listening to this so
far and paying any moderate amount of attention is going to be thinking what have
these two people found to work on together because Jessica's on this cosmic scale
pushing at the boundaries of theoretical physics and you're there almost on a small
molecular scale looking at very practical things about what goes into our body so
I'll come on to what you've got in common but I want to know how you both found
the crucible experience because 2021, you'd have been doing this online, wouldn't you,
Jessica? Did that make it harder? - That's a good question. I mean, in some ways,
maybe yes, and other ways, no. I've heard from previous Crucifilists that they met
in person and traveled across different labs, and that's, of course, very exciting,
but it's maybe harder to find time to actually discuss and exchange experience while
you're looking at exciting things in other people's labs, while in our case it was
purely introducing each other, giving background of our research and trying to find
overlap and being able to concentrate on this part I think was also very beneficial.
You can't have those chance conversations as you're in a bar or over a dinner or
something like that. It probably puts more emphasis on the speed networking where
you've got just a couple of minutes to be introduced to somebody. Definitely, we had
that and then we had this really interesting app that we were given to use for our
network. Do you remember Jessica, GatherTown and the 8 -bit emojis we had? But that
was very nice. But actually, I mean, of course, it is right that the bar or
corridor slash coffee machine type conversations are missing. But by early 2021,
we were already quite experienced with navigating this online only world.
It didn't take us very long before with this whole Crucible cohort. We had a select
channel for discussions and we had actually an online cocktail night to have a bit
more informal conversations that all worked quite nicely. So how did you begin to
gravitate towards each other, Zara, not just you and Jessica, but the other members
of your team. So we were really driven by a common mission and grand challenge,
which was trying to understand the bottlenecks in drug development. And one of these
bottlenecks really is around trying to understand and shed light really on the
properties and characteristics of drugs. While technology has really advanced in this
area, there's still a lot more work to be done and a lot that we don't understand
about what makes a safe and effective new drug in certain aspects of that. So the
team that we brought together, obviously Jessica and myself have introduced ourselves,
but we had other scientists, Camille Mussolik from Czech Republic. And he's based in
the chemistry department looking at drug discovery and development. We had Natalie
Lisky -Gigi, who was based in the material science department in University of Paris
and her area and focus of research is around material sciences and analytical
sciences and we had Fabien Massaubeau from the University of Strathclyde whose
research is based on semiconductors and he uses electron microscopy quite a lot in
his research and we had another colleague Helda Crispo who develops microscopes for a
living. So this very different group, very, very diverse in terms of skillset,
discipline, background, really had a lot to offer in terms of taking a different
view and a different perspective on some of the challenges that we face in drug
development and how we can go about addressing these. And Jessica, how did you sort
of then having gathered together and thought yes, there's something we could do here?
How did you go back and forth and decide what was a legitimate remit for your
project. You can't just go right, we're going to take on the whole of drug
development. Yeah, clearly for some of us, this was a more natural working
environment, while clearly I'm one of the people in the group were much further away
from this topic. But it was actually quite interesting to see yet to just explore
what we have in common. So we started with each of us introducing our labs,
introducing our work. And it was very fascinating actually to see that everyone kind
of discovered parts of everyone else's work where they thought, oh, that has overlap
with, I could do this and that for this project or this would be helpful for what
I'm doing. And so we kind of slowly converged. I am more or less doing material
research with this astrophysics application, but my everyday life is trying to look
into materials and actually having to measure atomic vibrations, which is not so far
away from somehow detecting nanoscale effects in medical applications.
I mean, we often in science end up in our own particular areas and then within
those areas, our own particular corridors and within those corridors, our own
particular research teams, but if we can tear down those walls sometimes, we discover
there are commonalities and maybe without overdoing the telescope microscope metaphors,
it helps to have that bigger picture sometimes and you can spot things that people
who are more ingrained in the field don't spot. Totally agree with our observation
and another aspect or element to this really is the fact that a lot of fields have
progressed a lot in the direction of understanding certain elements of research in
other areas but this hasn't necessarily transferred across the boundary and remit of
disciplines to really further other disciplines and I think that element of co
-creation and kind of benefiting other fields and sectors with what we have to offer
in terms of expertise can really progress science and move things forward and that's
what we certainly found through the monthly webinars that we hosted during the
pandemic before we decided to meet up as a group. Yes I was going to ask you
talked about progressing and moving things forward but Jessica where are you at with
this now and have you managed to have some physical meetings? Yes so after almost
two years of the initial crucible we had a meeting last year in January in Glasgow
where five of the original Six Matte, the Six One couldn't make it unfortunately,
but it was very nice to finally see people in person and to actually see Sarah's
lab in real and not just in pictures. We had some good opportunities to discuss,
actually had a look into potential funding we could apply for together to extend
these projects, make plans or exchange of PhD students in the future.
So quite a few nice ideas came out of this. - And probably some non -online
cocktails as well. And Zara, so what do you see unfolding over the next six months,
year, two years with this project? What are your goals? - Where we were at after
the in -person visit and discussion that we had was really looking at what are some
of the grand challenges that the team that we have assembled can address and what
are some of the solutions that we have. So beyond exchanging the expertise that we
had within the team we also talked about what facilities we have access to and what
infrastructure we each have and this really gave us some new insights into how we
can overcome and address some of the grand challenges that we identified. So off the
back of that some of the actions really have been sourcing EU -based grants or UK
-based grants where we can actually facilitate exchanges. So the nature of the work
that we're doing unfortunately is that it's very costly, so it requires funds for
equipment, for materials and also for staff. So we're currently at that stage where
we know what the grand challenges are. We have some pilot data within our own
respective disciplines and now it's the case of securing additional follow -on funds
to carry out these exchanges and trial out new ways of addressing ground challenges
and hopefully making a stride in that direction. But because these are ground
challenges, you're not the only ones looking into this. It's not like you're going,
oh yes, we found this interesting little side alley of science. This is one of the
big thrusts of modern medicine. If you can be doing something useful in this field,
you can potentially make a huge difference to the lives of millions, can't you?
Certainly and I think that's really what excited and motivated most of us was the
notion that if we can actually transform our understanding of how a small
nanomaterial interacts with bloods and cells and the human body then we can really
start to design and actually reverse engineer new medicines because then we know what
design features we're looking for and this could completely transform the industry
where people don't experience side effects. We pick the right treatment for the right
person for the right disease and it's very transformative indeed but what we were
doing essentially on the project was to focus on what we would call smart objectives
which are kind of measurable and that we can actually deliver on within in a small
timeframe as feasibility. And some of these present key bottlenecks currently in the
development of new nanomaterials for health, particularly in understanding how they
interact with biological systems. - Jessica, are you feeling optimistic? - Clearly I'm
always optimistic. I find it hard to judge how far or how easily we can make
progress here because it's still so far away from my personal world and experience
because I never had to do with medicine, but I find this extremely exciting and I
would be more than happy to be able to to somehow usefully contribute. And finally,
I want to bring you both back to what you thought of the whole crucible experience.
I mean, we talked about where you were in 2021, we talked about where you are now.
What part did participating in incredible play in that journey that you've been on.
Jessica. Oh, that is a tricky question. I think it gave me a better perspective of
where my research fits in or how it actually can fit in with what I usually would
think are totally different types of research. So it made me more open and less
scared so to say to approach people from other areas and ask actually for
collaboration, ask for potential overlap, for potential projects. And I believe much
more that there is this kind of overlap. And I think that is very,
very good for my personal approach of science and of collaboration on various types
of science. So you're more a funerity you might say? Yes,
definitely in practice. So I think it helped me actually to bridge from having the
idea or intention for interdisciplinary collaboration to actually knowing how to do
it. And Zahra? What I found really interesting from this experience was really
surrounding how different disciplines have different jargon and we speak all different
languages and what this experience did for me was to really go away and try and
focus on the simplicity of the message that I'm trying to convey and it has really
helped me in the sense of when I'm communicating my science, be it spoken or
written, to write things with the least amount of jargon possible and also to be
more open to communicate with people in a more simpler and effective language and
means, which means that we can all understand each other better and remove some of
the traditional barriers that exist between disciplines. So it's been very beneficial
from that perspective, but also it's been very beneficial in terms of making
connections with other people on the crucible as well beyond our own immediate
project. So, for example, we had a meeting in March at the Royal site of Edinburgh
where there were talks and it was actually during one of the presentations from the
other projects where they were looking for additional follow-on funds to trial a
biosensor for looking at water quality in rivers and I have contacts in that
industry in terms of conservation and water quality and I made an introduction where
potentially their that can be tested and put into practice. So just having that
opportunity really to interact with such a diverse group has given opportunities maybe
to all of us in ways that we didn't originally anticipate or expect. I wanted to
just to pick up on your point there about the the way that the different
terminology in different areas of science can get in the way of things. There's an
old line of Oscar Wilde's about the UK and America and he said they were two
nations divided by a common language. And I think we find this a lot in science,
don't we? If you can actually get past the jargon, there is a lot more common
ground than we realized, but we didn't realize it because we were using different
words for the same things or similar processes.

- Couldn't agree more with you onthat. And actually something interesting that happened since then was I developed a
proposal with some colleagues in our chemistry department where we work on the same
area but we tackle the same challenge using very different approaches and this
experience particularly made the whole process a lot easier the second time round.
So much so actually that we recently received the grant which is a prosperity
partnership award to engineer next generation antibody drug conjugates and again this
is very interdisciplinary with people working in data and ontology chemists and and
myself are more of a biology drug development person.

- Okay, well, I hope you're
not too busy to keep putting your time back into the crucible projects as well.
Thank you very very much indeed for your time.

That was Zara Rattery, senior
lecturer at Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences and also director
of the new EPSRC multi -scale metrology suite. And also there was Jessica Stein
-Lechner, assistant professor in the Department of Gravitational Waves and Fundamental
Physics at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. And they were also speaking about
their three other team members as well, which was Natalie, Liji, Guigui, Kamil,
Musillek and Fabian, Masabu. Oh, as best as I can pronounce them. And I'm sorry if
I've got any of those pronunciations wrong.

Thank you for joining us for this
podcast. There are plenty more in this and in series one. Go seek them out if you
enjoy them.