One of the themes that I will emphasize in #Research is that I believe that research is an act of compassion. This month, October, is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so I thought it would be a good time to share this story.
On September 22, 1990 my family lost my grandmother, Jessie Hoffman, to breast cancer. During her illness it made me very sad to realize that we would lose her. She was a very strong, kind and loving grandmother. Knowing that grandma suffered from violent bouts of chemotherapy induced vomiting and nausea and watching her lose weight and strength had a strong impact on me. It showed me that quality of life is as important of a topic in research as treating and curing diseases.
The next summer, in 1991, I began working on my Ph.D. in Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin. One of the rituals for beginning graduate students is to rotate through research labs for a month or two in order to select the research group where you will spend years of your life. The lab that most caught my interest was that of Marsha Betley, where they focused on staphylococcal food poisoning.
As I met with Marsha, she shared that the toxin that her lab studied (staphylococcal enterotoxin A – SEA) causes acute episodes of severe vomiting after eating contaminated food. She also shared that some pilot studies showed that linking the toxin to antibodies against cancer markers had proven successful in killing tumors in an animal model. This was due to the toxin’s ability to activate the immune system. Clearly, though, a therapy that induces violent vomiting would not be acceptable, but could we have the best of both worlds – a version of the toxin that targets tumors but doesn’t cause vomiting? Also very interesting was the mystery around the mechanism of the toxin-induced vomiting – was it separate from the immune activation or were they related?
The “Pink” aspect is that my grandma’s experience with breast cancer was very much on my mind as I made my decision to join Marsha’s lab. I wanted a project with some practical potential to reduce illness and suffering. So I chose to perform research on this toxin, focusing on structure-function questions that might illuminate its mechanism. I spent countless hours in confined spaces watching animals to see if they would vomit. I experienced at least one incidental exposure to the toxin myself, while walking the one-mile path to the parking lot in the afternoon (I’ll spare the details, but it added even further to my empathy with people suffering from severe nausea and vomiting). It was not hard for me to come in to the lab each day because I was motivated by the opportunity to make a difference.
The connection between our lab and cancer became even stronger when Marsha was diagnosed with a brain tumor in January of 1994. She went through all of the possible cancer treatments. She experienced all of the toxic side effects of her chemo and radiation and sadly passed that summer in her early 40s.
For me, the opportunity to work on a project that could improve the quality of life for cancer patients was highly motivating, even if it wouldn’t necessarily lead to a “cure”. Understanding a novel mechanism of one of the body’s more unpleasant reactions can have significant impact. I was able to publish a paper from this work that answered a few questions, but I can’t claim that it changed the field. But that’s how research really works – one motivated researcher at a time, seeking answers to small questions hoping that they lead to big answers.
Now, more than 20 years after I made my decision, research has provided cancer patients with better medications for managing nausea, but they are not perfect. Breast cancer treatment has made amazing progress. It is now a chronic disease for many who would not have survived 20 years ago. Research has indeed moved things forward for breast cancer and for managing the complications of chemo. But when I look back at the topics that our lab pursued, many of the “big questions” remain unanswered. With more research, we can get more answers that will help improve the quality of life even further and help more people survive devastating diseases. Research is indeed a compassionate profession.
I’ll share some other cancer related discussions in the future, but this one is for you Grandma!
