See You Next Year

New Voices is off for the rest of the week as we celebrate the coming of a new decade.

Best wishes for a safe and enjoyable conclusion to 2009, whether it's at home, abroad, or classic 80's movie style.

Happy New Year everyone!

Regulations for Animal Research

Yesterday, we started talking about animal-based research, and the importance of healthy, non-stressed animals for all concerned. Today, I want to focus on the regulations that address humane care.

Even if researchers didn’t have a vested interest in keeping their animals healthy, there are federal laws in place to protect the animals, as well as personnel at every research institution to enforce these laws. If researchers break the rules, their funding gets pulled and their lab gets shut down. Not exactly a career-maker.

A researcher can’t just start experimenting. The research process is set up in a way that requires researchers to receive approval before using animals for research. There are a number of steps in place to make sure that the proposed research is:

1. useful to public health, and
2. has the proper steps to ensure that the animals are used humanely, and only as necessary.

Before researchers can begin an experiment, they propose their research project to obtain funding. This is where reviewers will assess the validity of the project. Then, they must also receive permission to carry out the experiments on their chosen subjects. For basic researchers using animal models, this permission is granted by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). They make sure that the animal use is appropriate, the protocols are humane, and that, once approved, the protocols are followed.

Having applied for IACUC permission myself, I can tell you they are extremely thorough and beyond simply approving protocol, may also propose alternate protocols that improve the experimental design and the welfare of the experimental animals. Once the protocols are approved, the research can begin.

There are a few other things to keep in mind throughout this whole process:

1. The term animal model doesn’t refer only to the whole animal. Researchers can also use tissues or cells from an animal rather than the whole animal. I promise you, when researchers can do that, they do. This is easier, cheaper, and many researchers prefer to not use live animals. But in some instances, they need the whole animal. This is especially important when you’re considering how a treatment might affect the entire system (i.e. the cardiovascular system), and not just an organ (i.e. the heart).


2. I also want to point out that these experiments are not just for human health, but also for animals. Many developed therapies are used to keep pets and farm animals healthy as well. Just recently I read about an experimental cancer treatment that is being tested in dogs that have cancer. These dogs have no other options for treatment, and so they have been enrolled in the study to test this treatment. If successful, researchers will have developed a cancer therapy for dogs - saving some dogs’ lives in the process - and gotten one step closer to treating cancer in humans as well.

Speaking of humans, it's probably about time we started talking about how all of this basic research and animal research applies to human health. The series will be back next Tuesday, when we'll discuss the next step in the process - clinical research trials.


This is Part 5 of 13 in our From Ideas to Treatments series.
Part 1 - From Ideas to Treatments
Part 2 - Basic Research: It Starts with an Idea
Part 3 - You're an Animal!
Part 4 - Can I care about animals and do research too?
Part 5 - Regulations for Animal Research
Part 6 - Clinical Research Trials
Part 7 - Patient Safety in Clinical Trials: IRB Approval
Part 8 - Recruitment
Part 9 - Health Disparities in Clinical Research
Part 10 - A Brief History of Inclusion Policies
Part 11 - Breaking News: Women and Men are Different
Part 12 - Including Minorities in Clinical Trial Research
Part 13 - Bringing From Ideas to Treatments Home

Can I care about animals and do research too?

My dog Dinah at agility.

As a junior in college, I was at a turning point: should I pursue veterinary medicine or a career in research? I loved animals and was very compassionate towards their well-being. I wasn’t sure how I felt about animal-based research. I understood the necessity, both from a research and a legal standpoint. Most people don't realize this, but it is mandated that researchers prove the efficacy of a new drug or therapy using animals (as models for humans) before testing the treatment on people. So, without animal research, we wouldn’t have medical advances. But, could I really devote my career to research if it meant involving animals?

I began talking to a number of people about my concerns. It was a friend of mine that finally convinced me. She pointed out that perhaps I was the perfect person to pursue a career in research, because I genuinely cared about the animals. Taking her point and trying to keep an open mind, during my senior year in college, and for two years after, I worked in a research laboratory to really get a feel for what it was all about.

Well, I was in for quite a surprise. Rather than the dank, dreary lab that I had envisioned, I found that these research labs were quite the opposite. I quickly learned that researchers have a vested interest in keeping their animal populations happy and healthy.

Imagine if you will, a college student, whose biology final is approaching. This student absolutely needs an A in order to graduate, and has yet to begin preparing. In a brilliant move, the student decides to lock himself in his room for the next 48 hours, with nothing but coffee, snacks, and the fear a flunking to keep him going. The stress of the exam, lack of sleep, and the isolation will probably all work against him, and in the end he’ll perform no better than if he hadn’t studied at all.

Option 2 is one that most college students never consider, but time and again has been shown to provide the best results. It is to study in groups, in short sessions, being sure to eat, sleep, and take some breaks in between study rounds. Option 2 works, because it keeps stress down. Stress is a tricky thing. When experienced for over a long time, it breaks down your immune system, making you more vulnerable to illnesses, and generally affecting your body in a negative way.

The same is true of animals. If you put them in an environment that causes stress, they’ll become more anxious and prone to illness. In general their behaviors change. As a result, as a researcher you can't include them in your research trials because they’ll likely give you skewed results. If they get sick, then you absolutely can't use them in your research trials. So, if you don’t care for them properly, you’ve basically spent a whole lot of time and money on an animal that you can’t use. Not ideal!

So, not only did I find that there were actually a large number of researchers like me, who really care about their animals, all researchers have a vested interest in insuring their animals stay healthy.

For now, I'll leave you with that, and tomorrow, I'll talk about the laws in place that mandate humane treatment for research animals.


This is Part 4 of 13 in our From Ideas to Treatments series.
Part 1 - From Ideas to Treatments
Part 2 - Basic Research: It Starts with an Idea
Part 3 - You're an Animal!
Part 4 - Can I care about animals and do research too?
Part 5 - Regulations for Animal Research
Part 6 - Clinical Research Trials
Part 7 - Patient Safety in Clinical Trials: IRB Approval
Part 8 - Recruitment
Part 9 - Health Disparities in Clinical Research
Part 10 - A Brief History of Inclusion Policies
Part 11 - Breaking News: Women and Men are Different
Part 12 - Including Minorities in Clinical Trial Research
Part 13 - Bringing From Ideas to Treatments Home

You're an Animal!

The Muppet Show Season 2

Did you ever look around at your family and think, "I canNOT believe I'm related to these people"? Even if you really love your family, sometimes the vast differences between you and your nearest and dearest can make you question your genetic gene pool.

In fact, your cousin Wilfred's* behavior at the dinner table might make it easier to believe that we share quite a large number of genes with other animals - about 97% of our genes match those of primates and approximately 94% match those found in rats and mice.

Don't believe me? Look at the structures that make up an animal body, and those that make up our human parts. We all have kidneys, stomach, livers, etc., and these organs all do the same thing across species. It may be hard to imagine, but it's true. Trust me.

Our similarities to other mammals means we can ask a lot of questions about human health, using animals as models. The vast majority of research (~95%) is done in rodents (rats or mice). The remaining 5% of research animals includes primates, sheep, pigs, cats, dogs, and invertebrates. Each of these models is carefully selected for the research question at hand. All of these animals have similarities, and differences, with humans that make them an ideal model to use in asking different health-related questions.

For example, let's revisit Dr. Jay and his interest in studying heart disease. Having realized that there is previous research showing that a certain protein in the body is higher in people who suffer from heart disease, he can increase or decrease the levels of this protein in an animal model and see if it affects the animal's heart. If it does, then he can begin to work on a way to control the levels of this protein, and in doing so, he might have found a new protein to target to decrease heart disease in humans.

Using an animal model that has the same cardiovascular system, Dr. Jay is one step closer to discovering a new therapy for humans.

Since we’ve started talking about animal research, I’d like to pause for a minute because I understand the concerns that some of you may have about using animals in research. Actually, I almost chose an alternate career because I wasn’t sure that I agreed with animal-based research. Tomorrow I'll share my story on the topic, and what I’ve learned over the years as a research scientist.


*Another unfortunate imaginary direct relation of Great Uncle Milton and Great Aunt Mildred.

This is Part 3 of 13 in our From Ideas to Treatments series.
Part 1 - From Ideas to Treatments
Part 2 - Basic Research: It Starts with an Idea
Part 3 - You're an Animal!
Part 4 - Can I care about animals and do research too?
Part 5 - Regulations for Animal Research
Part 6 - Clinical Research Trials
Part 7 - Patient Safety in Clinical Trials: IRB Approval
Part 8 - Recruitment
Part 9 - Health Disparities in Clinical Research
Part 10 - A Brief History of Inclusion Policies
Part 11 - Breaking News: Women and Men are Different
Part 12 - Including Minorities in Clinical Trial Research
Part 13 - Bringing From Ideas to Treatments Home

Christmas Party Science Tricks

New Voices is off for the rest of the week, but we’ll be back on Monday with more fun and exciting posts.

In the meantime, we wish you and yours a Merry Christmas.

Oh, and just in case you want to add a little science to your holiday gatherings, try some of these cool party tricks to impress your friends and family.

Basic Research: It Starts With an Idea

Basic research comes from the idea that in order to treat a human condition - like pain, diabetes, or heart disease - we need to learn about that condition first. That's where I come in. Hi, I'm Jackie, and I'm a basic researcher.

As a basic researcher, I look at what we already know about a condition and the treatments that work, and then come up with new ideas to enhance both our understanding of the condition and how best to treat it.

How did we find out that ibuprofen soothes headaches, or that anti-histamines calm an allergic reaction? There was a process involved, and the process began with basic research.

We make hypotheses (educated guesses) to advance our field. Now that sounds all science-y and difficult, but we do our jobs using the same methods that most professionals use.

Take a small business owner; we’ll call her Sarah. Sarah sells sports equipment. As winter approaches, due to changing weather patterns and past history, she knows that she needs to order more ski equipment. But she can’t just order any old skis. She needs to consider what will sell. So she looks back at last year’s inventory, and finds that one company was more popular than any of the others she had carried, and there was a certain type of ski that constantly sold out. Of course, she’s going to use this information to inform her order for this year. She doesn’t just open up her catalog, sing eeny-meeny-miny-mo, and order wherever her finger lands. She hypothesizes that based on the data already available, skis X, Y, and Z will sell best.

To use a more researcher-friendly example, let's assume Dr. Jay's research focus is on heart disease. Like Sarah the business owner, Dr. Jay heads to the books to get started. He reviews already published literature on the disease, and notices that previous research shows an increase in the level of a certain protein in the blood for people who have just suffered a heart attack. Naturally, he wonders if this protein plays a role in the occurrence of that heart attack, and so goes on to figure out what it is, what controls its levels, and what happens when he blocks its production. By asking these questions, he's really wondering can this protein be a target that we can use to decrease instances of heart attack. As a basic researcher, Dr. Jay discovers all of this before applying it to humans, but his research is driven by the intention to use his findings to eventually improve upon public health.

You might not head to Dr. Jay when you have a cold, but his role in trying to keep people healthy is an important one. He starts with an idea, and then research continues from there.*


*Much like this series, which you can read more of next Monday!

Library image courtesy of Wrote.

This is Part 2 of 13 in our From Ideas to Treatments series.
Part 1 - From Ideas to Treatments
Part 2 - Basic Research: It Starts with an Idea
Part 3 - You're an Animal!
Part 4 - Can I care about animals and do research too?
Part 5 - Regulations for Animal Research
Part 6 - Clinical Research Trials
Part 7 - Patient Safety in Clinical Trials: IRB Approval
Part 8 - Recruitment
Part 9 - Health Disparities in Clinical Research
Part 10 - A Brief History of Inclusion Policies
Part 11 - Breaking News: Women and Men are Different
Part 12 - Including Minorities in Clinical Trial Research
Part 13 - Bringing From Ideas to Treatments Home

From Ideas to Treatments

Over the next few weeks, I am going to be writing a series that gets into the deep, dark secrets of the research world. Actually, it’s really just a chance for me to put my science researcher hat on one last time as a contributor to New Voices, and talk about an area to which I devoted better part of my adult life.

We use drugs every day to cure that headache, calm that cough, or even soothe that poison ivy rash that resulted from a weekend of gardening. But do you ever stop to think how that medicine came to be? Research goes beyond drugs. Your Great Aunt Mildred* couldn’t have gotten that coronary bypass surgery if not for research trials that tested, and then perfected, the technique.
So given that the results of research can be seen in everything that we do, let’s talk about how this process works. How does an idea become a life-saving therapy?

I'd love to give you a two sentence answer, but unfortunately, the process isn't that easy. Throughout the series, I'm going to do my best to explain the idea to treatment process in the hopes that by the end, we can all better appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into this process that we call scientific research.


*She's married to Great Uncle Milton.

This is Part 1 of 13 in our From Ideas to Treatments series.
Part 1 - From Ideas to Treatments
Part 2 - Basic Research: It Starts with an Idea
Part 3 - You're an Animal!
Part 4 - Can I care about animals and do research too?
Part 5 - Regulations for Animal Research
Part 6 - Clinical Research Trials
Part 7 - Patient Safety in Clinical Trials: IRB Approval
Part 8 - Recruitment
Part 9 - Health Disparities in Clinical Research
Part 10 - A Brief History of Inclusion Policies
Part 11 - Breaking News: Women and Men are Different
Part 12 - Including Minorities in Clinical Trial Research
Part 13 - Bringing From Ideas to Treatments Home

A Final Farewell

Well folks, it seems that three months has gone by since I first started as a science policy fellow. That means my tenure here is up. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ll miss writing for New Voices, but it’s time for me to move on.

Since one of the major focuses of the New Voices blog is to become effective advocates for science, and really, you can’t be an effective advocate without being an effective communicator, I wanted to focus on the that I’ve learned about science communication. In truth, while I’ve grown quite a lot during my time here, my take home lesson is that there are always more ways to improve, and the most difficult thing is recognizing where the gaps are and working on those.

I have had a career where my focus has always been in academics. Coming to Research!America, I held the view that academic and non-academic communication were very different. However, I’ve come to realize that the overall goal for both of these styles is to educate, and so really, they can’t be that different. The big difference is in the style.

Writing
When I was younger, I used to write fiction all of the time. For a time, I even dreamed of being a fiction writer. Once I chose science, I left fiction writing behind, and adopted a writing style expected in academia-one with a very serious, formal tone. The problem is in giving up one style for another. I didn’t consider that even as an academic, there would be times that I wasn’t writing for my colleagues; and truly, times that I shouldn’t be writing for them, but rather for the public as a whole.

Over the past three months, my focus has been to try and recapture the story-telling quality of my abandoned fiction writing days and intermingle it with my science writing. This is the only way to reach an audience that is not one of academics. Not only that, it’s made science much more fun for me. Rather than remain emotionless, I now focus on conveying my excitement while I’m writing.

I’m not saying that the formal style that I often used in academia is not useful. It has its place, but it shouldn’t be the only style in use.

Example: I recently submitted a job application, and the employer requested a writing sample. I sent them three, with a note explaining that each sample had a particular purpose: a technical writing style, a narrative style, and an in-between (for those times when you need to sound formal without using jargon). All of those styles have their place depending on the audience that you’re targeting.

The toughest part for me was figuring out how to develop a more narrative style of writing. So, I thought I’d share a few tips that I’ve come up with to guide myself in that endeavor:

1. Write as though you’re having a conversation with your best friend, and their training is in some field unrelated to science (I like to think of my friend Carrie, who is a theatre major).
2. Think of stories or analogies that can demonstrate the point and turn the concept that you’re explaining into more of a reality for your intended audience.
3. Avoid jargon at all costs.
4. Use pictures to illustrate your ideas.
5. Be concise, but not technical - there’s a difference and sometimes it’s hard to determine.

Presenting
Giving presentations is the other part of this communications equation. I hadn’t realized until academia how technical my presentations had become. And let’s face it, technical means boring.
As a fellow, I had to reexamine my presentation style, and really make an effort to expand it for a non-academic audience. I’ve always been a good presenter, but now I realize I wasn’t an engaging presenter. There’s an important difference. So, here are my presentation tips:

1. Don’t hide behind the slides. Limit your use of a laser pointer so that you’re only emphasizing distinct points. The more you look at the audience, the more they connect with you.
2. Bring personal interest stories into your presentation. Don’t just tell your audience the punch-line. Tell them why they should care about it too. How does it relate to them?
3. Keep slides simple and use pictures rather than words to highlight the main point.
4. The only way the audience will be excited about your topic is if you are, so use your voice and your body language to convey your excitement. Don’t try to hide it.

So that’s it for me, my final words of wisdom. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.

Au revoir.

Where Are They Now?

New Voices for Research would not have such an incredible archive of posts if it wasn't for the talented writers who have lent us their voices. As part of our blogoversary celebration, we're taking a look at where this year's contributors are now.

(alphabetically by last name)

Matt Hanzlik is back at the University of Minnesota for his senior year, and working as the conference manager for the Minnesota Parkinson’s Disease Forum. He’s still engaged with the Student Society for Stem Cell Research and being an advocate.

Rasika Kalamegham joined Friends of Cancer Research as a science policy analyst, and is based in the DC metro area.

Hillary Lewis is working for the district attorney’s office in Brownsville, Texas.

Jackie Maffucci's last day is today, and you can read her sign-off post on Monday.

Susan Maya is a clinical research coordinator at MGH Neurology in Boston, Massachusetts and is in the process of applying to medical schools.

Emily Norton stayed in the DC area and is a research analyst in the environmental health solutions group at The Cadmus Group, Inc., an environmental consulting firm that works primarily with the EPA. She’s focusing mainly on indoor air quality and its effects on health, such as asthma and lung cancer from radon. Not far from her series on climate change and health!

Ilse Peterson is continuing down the science policy road and is starting a job that will deal with a wide range of policy issues. She is excited to be staying in DC and plans to stay connected to New Voices.

Takao Yamada is in his second year of law school at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.


Emily Connelly and I will be continuing on, and we look forward to working with another amazing group of New Voices in 2010. If you're interested in being part of the New Voices team or a guest blogging opportunity, please let us know!

Our First Blogoversary

268 posts later, New Voices for Research has made one revolution around the sun.

Over the next year, we hope to continue sharing useful and fun information to all our readers. We've always said that the best way to communicate with your audience is to understand them, so today we're asking you to tell us what you'd like to hear about over the next year.

On the last weekday of every month in 2010, we'll incorporate the first 12 topics* suggested via comment into a post.

If you absolutely love everything we write about New Voices, and can't think of anything better than reading what we dream up each weekday (you know you can't!), then you're in luck. As a special treat for those of you celebrating with us, we're offering a blogoversary gift to the first three commenters who leave us a note today mentioning (or linking) to your favorite post on New Voices this past year. (Be sure to link back to your blog or send us contact information so we can mail you your book!)

Heck, go crazy and leave us a suggested topic and a link to your favorite post!

We really love doing what we do and appreciate your readership and support. Thanks for making this a great year for all of us.

~The New Voices for Research team


*We can't include topics of questionable appropriateness or are promotional in nature, sorry. However, we're happy to figure out a way to include completely obscure or random topics in an interesting and fun way - so be creative!