Alexis 0:01

Hello. Hello everybody and welcome to the Smoko Podcast. My name is Alexis Armstrong, your host. The Smoko Podcast is the place to celebrate and highlight women, trans women, and non-binary folk working within stem and trade occupations. So please tune in, take a break, join us. We are on Smoko. We are extremely lucky to be joined by the lovely Natasha Fcon, who is a specialist in biomaterials and drug delivery for the delivery of cancer immunotherapies, which is so fricking cool. So she is studying cancer immunotherapies and three D in vitro disease modeling and this kind of designing novel immunotherapies and treatment for cancer research and, cancer progression. She's a fellow at the Terasaki Institute and her two big projects right now are looking at liver and pancreatic cancer. Her background is in biological chemistry, molecular biology, and then a PhD at. Engineering and applied chemistry. It's just no biggie there. Her Tuesday is trying to solve cancer and right to look at solving cancer. An honor to have you on the show. I can't wait to learn more. Thank you so

Natashya 1:13

much for having me.

Alexis 1:15

You're welcome. If we could talk at the very beginning about how did you get interested in this in biological chemistry and molecular biology? What drew you to this field? Did you always know that this was gonna be the end goal to get to cancer research and get to this type of research? How did that happen?

Natashya 1:33

I know it sounds like a little cliche, but since I was like a child, I've always had an interest in science. My mom would gimme these little experimental science books and we do like little, your typical baking soda and vinegar. I got like a microscope set for like my birthday. I know it sounds very nerdy, I literally always like love science and I'm like a very curious person. I always wanna know how things work I was always like interested in science classes. I have more of that like math and science brain, like growing up like an English, like I suck at that, yeah, I just liked uncovering different scientific mysteries.

Alexis 2:10

Oh my goodness. And explore. I love that answer. I know that people be like, oh, it seems cliche. I don't care. I love how amazing that is. Being a little kid and just being so interested in it and being like, yeah, this is. What I wanna do, and I wanna discover this and kind of dive into science and understanding how things work. How did the biological chemistry part come to play? Did you take a course in university that really, you were like, okay, this is the direction, or has it always been human and disease and that type of field, that type of study?

Natashya 2:48

Actually in high school, I remember like towards the later years in high school, you have to start picking actual courses. So for sure chemistry was, you know, like I'm taking chemistry, like I've always loved, I literally go like forever. I like mix a bunch of things, see what I create, like always done that. So chemistry was for sure. When I first chose, I took physics. Where I chose physics and then, because I've always been really good at math. Not that like I love it, but like I've always been just really good at it. If there's like a straight answer, like I could get it just like it's easy. Makes sense to me. Yeah. But then I remember I had it like my second semester and a lot of people were talking about like the biology course and it was so interesting and like fixing this gene and this gene and whatever. Literally I remember last minute, like it was like the day before the second semester starting, I just, something in me is like, now I'm gonna switch physics in biology. And I did. And that's when I had one of my like great teachers, like he was so amazing and interested me so much and like all of everything biology. I just was interested in high school and then in university I started taking like courses. In science. Mainly like chemistry, like mixing things, creating new things But I always wanted it to be for some sort of like purpose. I don't wanna just do things just to do things. I'm like, how can this be applicable? How can, like I actually, whatever I do, help somebody one day. I feel like that's where the biological applications come from.

Alexis 4:19

What a full circle moment of getting that first chem set. Yeah. And just like mixing chemicals and being like knowing Oh, seriously? From a young kid to be like, I know that this is like something that I love being like a little mini witch as like a kid. But for that to turn into, to be like, okay, how is this gonna help us? I just think it's so amazing what you're doing and it has such thank fantastic application and it's gonna impact so many people and help so many people.

Natashya 4:44

Thank you. I also remember seeing this quote once If you grow up and you be a scientist, it's like you never really have to grow up kind of thing. I love that too because I'm like, I don't want, if my work and like life separate, like my work is part of me It's what I love to do. I don't wanna come to a place where I don't enjoy all the time. With science too, it's very different every day. It's not the same thing. Learning about this and this it just, changes 'cause there's new discoveries every day as well. It intrigues me.

Alexis 5:11

No, 'cause it is true. It's so novel, it's so dynamic. I think when you're following sciences or you're doing a career in sciences, it's not that career that work and life is separate. It's that like you've brought your love of being super nerdy and really interested in one thing to your life, right? Like it is definitely a, basically a mesh thing. And so it's beautiful to have that drive and that passion for it. I wanted to talk about what you're doing right now at the Terasaki Institute and your work. I know you study biomaterials and that's your specialty of three D in vitro modeling and the delivery of drugs for immunotherapy. But before we get into that research, 'cause when I first wrote that down, I was like, I do not know what any of these words mean. Yeah, yeah. Can we maybe start there and being like, let's break it down. Yeah. For a layman like myself to be like, what is definitely a bio material? What is a three D in vitro model? What are they used for?

Natashya 6:08

For sure. biomaterials basically is a type of material that's either derived from biological substances or it's used for a biological purpose. Okay. Like a general definition. Basically material has some sort of biological application or drives from okay, is biologic a protein or like a carbohydrate or like something like that. Okay. There's like lots of different types of biomaterials. There's hydrogels, which, you could think of like hair gel or elevator gel, like that. It's that type of gel and it's, basically, material. That's the main type of biomaterial that I work with are these hydrogels. Those are the main types of biomaterials I use. And there's also, nanoparticles, polymers, ceramics, metals, everything depending on, on, yeah. The application that you use. with regards to in vitro models. So these are essentially something that, we're making in the lab that will mimic difference tissues or environments. Like I dealt with, the pancreatic tumor model. So essentially I'm mimicking that pancreatic tumor microenvironments. In the lab. And these are important because for different applications. To be able to understand different biological mechanisms, like what are the different factors that play and contribute to cancer metastasis. Understanding the biological mechanisms that go on within this environment. But also then to have a model where you could do different drug testing. So eventually, you wanna get patient derived samples, and then you could do this in the lab. If a doctor's prescribing a patient chemotherapy, is it gonna work for them? Do we wanna just give it to them in their body, and see what happens there. Can we have this model and see, does it kill their cancer cells? What is it affecting? And like Elise, we'll know a little bit about. Whichever drug you're gonna give to them prior to actually,

Alexis 8:10

giving them the drug. Yeah. That's absolutely fantastic. It's basically like a proxy system.

Natashya 8:15

Yeah, essentially.

Alexis 8:17

Wow. Wow. My goodness. It's like basically creating like an artificial environment or an artificial proxy for what does a pancreatic cell look like or what does this look like in a liver? When you're doing your hydrogels, are they brand new or they, new types of hydrogels that have never been created to mimic that environment and to mimic it for the model.

Natashya 8:44

How does that work? So there's lots of different type of s that we do here, like a lot, for the drug delivery aspect that I work on. Those ones I'm synthesizing newer, materials that, you know haven't been made before. Wow. And those actually, I want to, make them kind of a new class of biomaterials, which are immuno materials. And these are materials that have an effect on the immune system, which, has a really important, effect when you wanna deal with different immunotherapies. With regards to the modeling side, the ones that I've used in the lab are, like gelatin based or hyaluronic acid based. And we'll modify them a little bit. With those we're mimicking some of the components that are in the kind of extracellular matrix. The extracellular matrix is just like a matrix it's an environment in which, something develops in, so it's the surrounding medium basically. Basically this matrix, it gives, support, and structure to cells and tissues in the body. With regards to the in vitro modeling, we'll take a couple components that are, in the matrix of these, tumors. So we picked hyaluronic acid and gelatin is a denatured form of collagen and collagen in the matrix. So basically we're mimicking that environment to. See, understand lots of different biological mechanisms, so it's not just like how the cancer cells grow. But how does the stiffness and the mechanical properties of the environment have effect of those? We could add immune components as well, and it's how does the immune and the cells and the biological environments all interact? It's very complex inside. The more we're able to incorporate different aspects, in vitro, we could get close to or closer to recapitulating what's going on in our body. Eventually, we would wanna raise the need for in vivo studies like using like mice and rats and stuff because, one, there's a whole lot of ethical problems with that. And then, two's a mouse actually like match represent us even like, not really. Yeah.

Alexis 10:48

It's so cool that this type of modeling you can control different aspects of a natural system. So you could put that on freeze. Yeah. And then you could do a different model to be like, okay, let's adjust the stiffness or let's change one aspect. Yes. A little bit, right? It's a stepwise system of that. And my next question is could you describe this matrix environment? You did a wonderful job of describing the role of the matrix and in cancer progression when you're doing this, matrix in this, in vitro three D modeling. Where do you take your different tests from? Are they from known cancer patients or cancer cases, or are they looking at, what's common in the human body? Where are you getting those parameters from for your testing?

Natashya 11:32

The cancer cells that we use are cell lines that we order. Okay. I don't know if you heard A T C C, it's like common cell bank company, but we order the cells from there. Eventually we're getting collaborators with clinicians that could provide us with patient-derived actual cancer samples. But right now we're just using cancer cell lines. With regards to this matrix, just to backtrack a little bit. Yeah. The extracellular matrix, and this is how I got into it too with my biomaterial background. It really fine tunes like a lot of the cellular processes including cell proliferation and survival. In cancer research, And it's specifically pancreatic, which like I was looking at, it really has an effect on, biochemical and different biophysical properties can activate certain pathways for cancer progression. In like pancreatic cancer, in comparison to a healthy state, it's so much stiffer, like the mechanical properties are so much stronger. So basically with the gels that we chose, so we chose ones that, mimic the components of the matrix, but also that were able to fine tune these mechanical properties. So yes, we're gonna make the gels much more stiffer. And then we looked at okay, how, when it's higher stiffness, does it express more of these cancer progression markers? For example, a matrix, when you're designing a model for pancreatic, it's gonna be different from the brain as well, because the brain is so much softer and this is where that hydrogel biomaterials come in because we're able to choose different components and also, tune their properties. So we actually match the different, like essentially like properties in our body

Alexis 13:19

basically. The different cases, the different organs, and what you would expect with cancer progression of how that would change the body, you're able to mimic it with different biomaterials. I wanted to get back a little bit to this new novel material while we're still here. Your immuno, material how would that be used. How does that work? Is it an immunotherapy in itself or is it modeling?

Natashya 13:40

That, aspect of research that I do, I'm really interested in it right now 'cause I think it's a hot kind of topic, basically before, in terms of research and biomaterials, you didn't want it to have an immune response You were like, if it's immunogenic, we're like, no, it's that kind of thing has neutral. But now we're actually, yeah, it's like you wanna use it for tissue regeneration and stuff, but you don't wanna cause an inflammatory response or you want it be okay. And now there's this whole concept of immuno materials where we're actually, designing materials to harness the properties of the immune system or have an effect on them. I'm trying to deliver different, cancer vaccines. For the treatment of cancer. A vaccine in cancer term is basically you are delivering this molecule, it's like a protein that's over expressed on cancer cells, but not so much in healthy cells. When you give it to, your immune system, we're training the immune system. It's like, okay, go find anything with this molecule on it and go kill it. The cancer cells over express it. Oh, okay. Sometimes cancer vaccines are not very immunogenic. These cancer vaccines have reached some clinical trials but are not going past clinical trials. And that's because you're training it a little bit, but you're not causing like a huge immune response that's, enough to actually kill the cancer. Wow. So we always wanna deliver these molecules with, let's say an adjuvant. It's just something that increases, immune responses. But basically with the immuno material, it's like, okay, we wanna design it in a way that, it has components that could increase, let's say. Immune cell uptake of the protein antigen. So that it actually enhances the immune response. Wow. That is so

Alexis 15:28

interesting.

Natashya 15:29

You did use it as like a delivery, so like a delivery mechanism. The protein antigen where you have a sustained release, but also at the same time it simultaneously acts as an adjuvant, where in itself, we're increasing like cellular uptake or antigen presentation to different immune cells. We're hoping to increase the efficacy of the actual vaccine.

Alexis 15:51

It's basically giving it like a boost. if I was like putting it into a metaphor of like right now with cancer vaccines of being like it's yelling at the immune system, but it might be yelling in a wrong language or it might be speaking really softly and this is giving it a little boost to actually adequately say its message Yeah. And broadcast it to the immune system to be like, Hey, get your butt in gear and go get those cancer cells. If I was to break it down in like a very particular day, no, but that's fantastic. Yeah. That's so cool that's been a change in this subfield that before it was like, Hey, don't make it with any immune response. And now it's like, no, we really need to focus on it. If we could bring it to a, a layman, when we're doing your job, when you're creating these biomaterials and when you're doing this modeling, could you walk through how that actually works. What are the steps that are involved in creating this model or creating this biomaterial? And then of that maybe to get people in the right mind frame. What are the parameters that are going through your mind that you're like, I have to be conscious of these set list of things.

Natashya 16:58

The very first thing is literature review. Okay. we read a lot of papers to see what's the gap? What's the problem? So we always start with what's the problem right now? And then from there it's okay, so now what's been done before and what worked and what didn't work. When you're designing new things. For example, when I'm designing my materials, I do these peptide based materials. I'll just give an example. Like when I'm designing like peptide sequence, I'm gonna be like, okay, I know these amino acids will self-assemble and form a hydrogel. Okay. Because there's so many reports on it. And I know these amino acids, they have been reported before as, like immunogenic, adjuvants, let's say. There's patents on it. From like my biological knowledge, I know like some fatty acid could increase, cellular uptake through membranes and stuff. Knowing all of this information, I'm like, okay, now what if I combine this, and this, like form gel, would it have like adjuvant properties and stuff? And then, I'll go to the lab, I'll do it, and then you see if it works or not. Like research is, failure. Like 90% of the time, you have these ideas, but go try it. You don't know if it's gonna work. But I think that's like the exciting thing too, because when it does work, it's like great. That's my thought processes when I'm in designing these new, materials. What am I gonna use them for all as well. Throughout my PhD, I made different hydrogels, I made different peptide compounds and stuff. When I moved to like my postdoc here again, it was biomaterials, but I really, opened up the applications of what you could do with these things and how many different things you could synthesize. And then I start, Kind of putting it together, maybe cross linkable materials are good when you wanna fine to the mechanical properties. And like physical biomaterials are good when you wanna deliver things because they have these properties that allows 'em to be injected, whereas like these ones don't. So knowing, their properties and knowing what's been done before, and then you just come up with, idea, a plane, can I put all this together and does it work? Back to

Alexis 19:10

the basics of what like drew you to, to chemistry. Natasha, I love it because I don't think maybe people realize that science is basically failure constantly and you're like slowly just getting a little bit better and just being like, okay, what did I learn in that? That test did not work. Could you define that for people listening? What do you mean when it fails? What does that actually look like and what does it mean when it's successful? How do you All of a sudden measure to be like, oh my goodness, it's working.

Natashya 19:36

For regards to like the immuno material that I'm trying to design, let's say, I'm going to, synthesize a bunch of things together and then I'm gonna go test it with my cells. So let's say I want the cells to express some sort of protein to show that they're activated by the gel. So then it's like I put the gel, I culture them with the cells. Then I do another test and it's okay, great. This expresses this protein I want. Perfect. I designed it. Yay. So exciting. Yeah. Now I'm gonna continue it worked. But then it's like I could, spend so much time synthesizing this compound. Let's say it takes three weeks to synthesize another couple weeks to culture the cells. I finally put them together. I do all my staining, I go read it on the machine and, it doesn't express what I want it to. That would, be like a failure. But when I say failure, I guess I have this personality. Yeah. Failure of a researcher. Yeah. You can't get discouraged when you see this thing, when you see these things like, yes, it sucks. Like you spend, months go by and it's oh, it didn't work after. It sucks, but then. It didn't work. What can I do going forward? You always have to be resilient and honestly, sometimes failures are good too because you could publish it and be like, okay, well I did this, this, this, but this worked. It's for other people to read and see and now they're not gonna try it. And do the same mistakes that you're gonna do. Has this been done before? Has this been tried before? And it's okay if it doesn't work? Not everything works, but as long as you take what you've learned, what can I do going forward now? I think that's what's most important. That's what makes like good research is like not getting discouraged. Oh,

21:23

totally.

Alexis 21:23

Still working. I think good research means that there's no such thing as failure. Like I remember when I was first doing my master's, I was so bummed when it, like data didn't, Come out the way that I expected it and like the way that I had Yeah. Dreamed of. And like I had created all these scenarios in my head of being like, this is what the environment's gonna look like. And my advisor told me something that always stuck with me of being like, no data is still data. That's still a discovery in itself that it wasn't what we'd expect and like why isn't it like what we would expect? Why did that go wrong? What happened to it that led to this? That's just as important. And I think that's the best part about being a researcher is you have no idea what's gonna happen. Natasha, is there anything, while you've been doing all your testing. Has there been anything from you data that's really shocked you that you just didn't expect? Has there been any big surprises?

Natashya 22:14

It always, not like that. It surprised me, but I always get so excited. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like this actually worked. Like what? Surprising in like that way? So when we were doing, the project with the in vitro modeling we're hypothesizing that yes, hydrogel, biomaterial, stiffness does in fact have an effect on the markers of cancer and stuff. When we found that it actually does, like we saw, we like when we did so much of this different data and we're like, oh my gosh, this gene and this gene and this gene are, are over expressed when they're actually exposed to this, more cool, stiff like property of the biomaterial. I'm like, oh, that's actually really cool. I'm like, wow. Because then it's like when you get this information it's Out there now for Okay. If other scientists wanna be like, okay, how do I target that now? Everyone's targeting like cancer stuff how to enhance like the immune cell, efficacy response. Now that we know that the environment really does play a role in these, like cancer phenotype changes. Wow. Can I make a treatment now to target that? And maybe that will increase the efficacy of some of these typical standard treatments that we have too. Wow. There's so many aspects of the treatment, you have a drug that directly has cytotoxic effects or you have a drug that will increase immune cell, Efficacy and stuff like for treatment. Now it's like we're bringing in delivery mechanisms. How can we target the environments or like certain pathways. I think that's pretty cool. That was like a fun project. We wrapped up. The immuno material gel that I'm working on now. If that works, that will be like really

Alexis 23:55

cool. Oh my goodness. That's absolutely amazing. I think you summed it up brilliantly of the fact that this is just like a step one. It could be like a marker, all of a sudden it's something new and then there's so many other researchers and there's so many other people that could then use this research as foundational to treatment or to like a new drug or, a new thing to target.

Natashya 24:18

And then even in one of, like another study, so we had like our hydrogel system and we would incorporate like a chemotherapeutic agent in it. And we were trying to do more kind of a local delivery because, chemotherapy has lots of systemic side effects. Before I got here, the institute did this kind of treatment on a melanoma type of cancer. And it worked great. And then I got here and I was put on this liver cancer project. So we started off with kind of the same treatment. And one of the things that was like shocking was that, it didn't work as well on the liver in comparison to the melanoma. This type of liver cancer is much more aggressive. And this, conclusion that we made was, gave us the idea to do the combination therapy. Where we, combined chemo and immunotherapy together into hard shell for the local delivery. So that was like another kind of like surprising result that I got. I'm like, wow.

Alexis 25:11

That was actually my next question is like what's the progression of this? Of like after you've successfully modeled an immunotherapy, what would be the future of the work? Do you move on to a different type of cancer? Which sounds like sometimes you do, or do you progress to a different type of testing or a different type of immuno gel? What's the next step that you're like, okay, oh my goodness, my immuno gel. It worked. It's amazing. I'm gonna celebrate and like on a vacation for a week. And then what would you do next? Would you do immuno gel two or would you do a different type of cancer? What would be the next step of that?

Natashya 25:44

I have the two kind of research aspects, like the modeling and the drug delivery. So with that we modeled, just the cancer environment. We got the cancer cells, we put them in the hydrogel, and we looked at different, like markers on the cancer. So a next step for that one would be to make an immunocompetent model, so co culturing the cancer cells with the immune cells together. Oh, okay.

Alexis 26:07

And see how it

Natashya 26:08

interacts. Then looking at hydrogel effects on this. like immunocompetent models are becoming more popular because of, the whole immune system and how their role in cancer really has an effect. And then in terms of, the immuno material side, designing those. Is it gonna work for all of the, peptides? 'cause this peptide antigen is expressed on only certain individuals and then there's so many other different, protein antigen. You wanna, design the material that, okay, what kind of interactions do I want it to have with that protein? And it's not gonna have the exact same effect for all of the ones, for all of the body. Oh wow. That's where you come up with which material is gonna work the best for this peptide for this cancer? So we're always like designing new materials depending on if we want to deliver a cancer vaccine or a cytokine or an antibody or a chemo drug. It's really gonna have an effect on the application that we wanna do. So right now I'm designing this one for a specific cancer vaccine. For liver cancer. In the future I will try different peptides. Maybe they might not release the same way 'cause of different interactions with the gel and the protein. And then yeah, ideally, you wanna make it more applicable to other types of cancers as well. I have the biomaterial background and we're just doing applications and like liver and pancreatic. But to be able to do this biomaterial and give it to, other type of cancer patients, that's something that we're interested in as well.

Alexis 27:35

It's so interesting and it's so cool that it could be used For so many different types of cancers and be used in different types of applications. What I understood of that is like create the model specific to what you're actually looking at and then taking that as an end goal. Being a good scientist and working your way up to be like, okay, what's working? What isn't working? What do I need to change in relation to that? This might be a little bit of a different type of question or a step back maybe of when we're talking about cancer testing and cancer treatment as a whole in an industry. There's so much interest in it. The public obviously wants to cure cancer and that's been something that's been a huge forever. Do you think that there's anything that the public doesn't really understand about this space or any kind of misconceptions that they think maybe the public needs more education? Or where would we start as a layman to better understand what you do and the future of your industry, of where your industry is going?

Natashya 28:33

We all say we wanna have the cure for cancer. That's been like, said a bunch of times, but I think the treatment, the more that I get into it, I realize the treatment's actually very difficult. First off, there's a millions different types of cancers. That don't function the same way. Oh goodness. Yes. And the actual patient, and their like environments really has an effect on treatment outcomes as well. A misconception of I wanna cure cancer, is there's not gonna be a cure, like one cure for, all cancer, every cancer for every patient. That's something that, you really have to take into consideration. And that's why I feel like there's so much research on it. And there's gonna be continue, there'll continue to be so much research because it really depends also on like patient specific mutations. Your genetic code is different from mine. So I may express different mutations than you. Sure, this one drug is not gonna, it can, but it's not a hundred percent guaranteed that it's gonna work for me the same way it works for you. Recently, how the whole microbiota is having effect on how your body responds to treatments. Now people are taking that into consideration too. In your tumor microenvironment, it has its own kind of microbiome, like how our gut has microbiome and people have found like that has an effect on different immunotherapy treatments too. Wow. Yeah. There's so many things that are, coming out There's so many things that we're finding out that has an effect on not only the cancer progression, but how your body's gonna respond to the treatments. People have been talking about like resistance to bacteria, Forever. Now. That's why you keep needing to get research in this area. Like you need new antibiotics all the time because we're evolving, but the bacteria's evolving too, and like cancer's evolving. So I think like different treatment aspects will work for different people and different types of cancers.

Alexis 30:28

We need nothing but research and we need everyone looking at it, and it needs to continue. I think that's a good call out too, because I do think that we have this like homogenous view of cancer and cancer treatment and cancer research that we view that it's one thing and that it's gonna be one treatment. It's gonna be this mythical, magical treatment that's gonna stay static forever. And then once we get that, it's gonna be like penicillin or it's gonna be something that stays constant with time. I like that call out of being like, it's so complicated. But I also think a theme of this is like how science is constantly evolving and changing. But then it's also, the bacteria is changing, man. Cancer's also evolving. It's a natural thing. It's not something static. It in itself is changing too. So how do we keep up with that? And there's always gonna be that lag and there's always gonna be that jump of understanding as we figure out this puzzle piece.

Natashya 31:20

I honestly didn't realize it until I started getting into like the research as well. People always talk about, yeah, there's gonna be a cure one day. I'm like, well, I hope there's like 50 million different cures, because that's what we need. Honestly, we don't

Alexis 31:32

need one. We need like a. And on that, Natasha, is there anything right now that like you're, really excited about? Is there something specific that you are obsessed with, that you're nerding out about? Is there something that kind of gives you hope for this big holistic curing cancer that's bigger than all of us

31:55

The new materials are really interesting. That's my focus right now. It's becoming more of a novel type of treatment using these immunotherapies as opposed to radiation and chemotherapy and surgery and stuff. If I could get the material to work as a delivery system and simultaneously, like as an adjuvant, that's what I'm really geeking out on right now. Also the stuff about how this microbiota in your body kind of affects treatments. That would be something that I would wanna research into the future as well. Just recently these articles that came out that said no, your gut's not the only microbiome. The tumor actually has its own microbiome that has an effect on these therapies. And I was like, what do people know this? Can we target it somehow?

Alexis 32:40

Is there anything that, like in the literature, in the community that gives you hope? Has there been big strides that you're like, oh my goodness, they figured it out on looking at like lung cancer or they figured it out with a different type of disease? Is there anything in the community that you're like, oh my goodness, one day we're gonna get there for pancreatic cancer?

33:04

Yeah, definitely. I keep up to date on the literature, so that's how I see, the gaps in it too. There's researchers all over the world that are looking into this type of things and approaching it from different aspects, what I think is really cool. I have a biomaterial background, so I'm approaching it from that type of aspect. And. Immunologist, which will approach it from the, immunology point of view. And then you have your biologists, you have your chemist. I think that's what's getting really cool is that it's very interdisciplinary. Before maybe people would only read papers in their field, if I'm trying to make this, I'm gonna just read chemistry papers and stuff. But now I'm gonna read everything because, they may have solved it from this aspect, but if I combine my expertise, then, we could move forward faster. That's also something that the Terasaki Institute, really does and wants to be proud of, is that we're taking people from, so many different backgrounds. We have biologists, clinicians, chemists, engineers, and it's very interdisciplinary here. We're able to tackle these problems. From so many different viewpoints. That's where you can really achieve what you want to do faster and like really have an impact.

Alexis 34:24

I think that's probably where the best type of science is gonna come from is like more people looking at it, more people looking at it with a different point of view and coming to a, common decision of it. It feels all of a sudden this big kind of gigantic problem, it feels like a little bit easier to manage if there's so many people looking at it. It's broken down That might be the answer for the next one is, what do you love most about working within this field? Maybe it's that the cross-disciplinary, or maybe it's discovery. What do you love most about it?

35:13

All of the above, really. I love research in general. I'm a very like, curious person. I wanna do these great things and solve big problems, have an impact on the world.

Alexis 35:23

All of it. The whole thing. That's honestly what you want. You want someone to be like, yeah, I love every single aspect. I can't choose one man. I can't wait to see what happens with this new therapy. It's so cool to hear what you do and how passionate you are for it. And the impact that this type of research has on the public and has the potential to have huge impact in terms of people's health and protecting them And with that, If anyone is listening and they're like, oh my goodness, this girl is a complete freaking badass and I wanna become her and this is what I wanna do. Any advice for them if they're just starting out and they're like, okay, I wanna go into stem, I wanna follow her path.

36:07

I would say be persistent and like continually fight for what you're passionate about. So with this, like I'm very passionate about it. I love what I do and like sometimes I wake up and I'm like, wow, I'm gonna go to the lab and do experiments. That's so cool. That's my job. I feel like when you have that like attitude that it just, it makes things so much more fun. But also you achieve things like better and you don't get discouraged as much. Research fails a lot of the time. At the beginning, Course I was the same, where I was like, I got a result, didn't work out. I'm like, damn, whatever. But you really learn. Persistence comes in and I think that if you really want something also like no matter what barriers are there, don't let someone tell you no because, I knew that I loved research, but like in my undergrad, did I have the best grades and stuff? Not really did I know that I was gonna get into grad school, no idea. I had the mentality of this is what I wanna do. No one could tell me that I can't do it. If they don't accept me, I'm just gonna try again. I'm just gonna do something and I'm gonna do it again. If you really want something, don't get scd. From a woman's perspective as well, like I've known a lot of situations around me where, I see women have to work a bit harder and like they, they need to prove themselves to be taken seriously. It's not like just something that is oh yeah, like women in science, whatever. Like the higher you move up in science too, the less and less women there are. It's like all men Like women in science, like you could do it, like we need it. Sometimes I'm in there and in some of these meetings where they're more like male predominant and there could be like more women here that will like really like benefit and help this meeting go run so much smoother. Like it's just like different, perspectives. I know that in terms of whether it like be like a comfortable thing or a family thing There's so many different reasons why they don't keep going. But I feel like now we're in like a day where we have options where we can, and if you're interested, don't get discouraged because like I've seen a lot of women around me that they like get these kind of comments. Said, discourages them, but I feel like we have to continue fighting and do it because like we belong in this industry. It matters.

Alexis 38:52

Yeah, exactly. We need to stay here and then, and yes we do. We belong in this industry and this industry was made for us. Any help if you've gotten those comments and you've gotten discouraged? Because I do think a good knee jerk when I used to get those comments, and still, honestly, if they catch me on the wrong day and someone tells me a comment, it will affect me. Some days I'll just be able to get over it, and some days I won't. Some days it'll hit a little bit closer to home. Do you have any advice for maybe when it does hit closer to home or like when you're like, oh my God, today is just not my day, or, I'm really new to the idea of research and this idea of failure. Anything that's helped you get through that and change your mindset?

39:42

What I would say is talk to people you don't have to keep it to yourself all the time. I know a lot of scenarios where some girls, they kept certain things that happened to them, to themselves, and it like weighs on them more. But I think there's, a decent amount of women now in this industry where it could have happened to someone else. You telling someone could really help you resonate and get through this stuff, together. I've developed thick skin, so like at first, things were discouraging. I would like doubt myself, can I do this? Am I supposed to be here? But now if someone says something to me, I'm like, too bad. Don't care. I'm gonna do it. If you wanna treat me this way, fine, but I will prove to you that I'm supposed to be here. You're gonna have good days and bad days. Of course. I've been through some like experiences too where I'm like, did that actually just happen? But then I'll sleep on it, I'll talk to somebody about it, or then I'll wake up the next morning and I'll be like, you know what? I'm not gonna let whoever around me impact. Because at the end of the day, this is my life, this is my career. This is what I wanna do.

Alexis 40:43

What helped me is now as I've gotten older and more comfortable to be like, I deserve to be here. What's helped me is just letting them. I don't really care if they view me as lesser anymore, if you view that, I don't know that's fine, that's on you. But you're gonna find out very soon that I do have that expertise and then you're gonna have to come to that realization once you get on board or you finally realize your bias. I think that's helped of just letting people maybe underestimate you and just be like, okay, well, they'll figure it out. It'll be a shock to their system when they figure it out, but they'll figure it out. It's not my job to try to bring them on board and to show them my validity. Like it takes too much energy. If you wanna discredit me, go for it, but I'm just gonna be over here doing my job and eventually you're gonna catch on and look like an idiot. So that's house, but it's took time. I dunno, I don't know about you.

41:30

No, I love that. I love that you like literally hit it. That was perfect. Seriously. It's not like our job to make the people around me like be like, yeah, I'm gonna have to prove to you. It's like whatever I'm proving, like I'm proving for myself that like I could do it. I used to want to be like, yeah, like I could do it, believe in me and stuff. It's like I believe in myself. The person who's giving me my positions and stuff believes in me. I don't care about the other people. If you wanna waste your energy talking about why I shouldn't be here, I should not, go ahead. Have fun.

Alexis 42:02

I'm over here looking at my cool gels and I'm excited about my immunotherapy and I just wanna do my job, man. Read about me in nature when it comes out in a week. I love it. I absolutely love it. Natasha, thank you so much. This has been so cool. It's so fascinating and it's amazing research. Just thank you so much for coming on and educating us and doing an amazing job to explain it to a layman.

42:30

Thank you so much for having me. Honestly. I really appreciate it.

Alexis 42:35

Thank you again for coming on the show and thank you everybody for listening. This is the Smoko Podcast. We have new episodes every Wednesday, so we will see ya next week. So Tata, for now.