肿瘤学的开拓者:
改变人生的方向

个人经历往往会推动职业目标

“一寸一寸，生命如履薄冰. 一码一码，生活艰辛."

从小到大，这是我妈妈最喜欢说的话之一. 当我对未来不知所措或惊慌失措时，她经常这么说. I might have rolled my eyes then, but it’s a message that has remained with me long after I lost her. 对我来说，这句话是关于韧性和坚持. It helped me through the grief of losing both her and my brother to cancer.

我今天仍然依赖它. My job at AstraZeneca as a member of the drug discovery team is to help develop our portfolio to discover new compounds, get them through the discovery process and hopefully turn them into oncology medicines that one day can make a difference to patients. 但我失去了两个世界上最亲近的人因为癌症, 我知道挫折常常会让人感觉很私人. “一寸一寸……” -我能听到我妈妈在那些时刻提醒我. 

很早就受到启发

从小到大，我一直是一个热爱科学的孩子. At 14, my English teacher gave us an assignment to outline what credentials and discoveries are required to be published in a journal. 我选的是一本生物化学杂志，从那天起, I committed myself to earning my doctorate and becoming a published author in that same journal, 最好是研究癌细胞生物学. 当我失去母亲的时候, 然后我弟弟得了癌症, that professional ambition became a personal mission to become more directly involved in impacting patient outcomes.

It was shortly after I started my career as a staff scientist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that my mother was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma – the exact disease I’d studied in my postdoctoral assignment when I first arrived at the NCI. 我努力寻找一个适合我母亲参加的临床试验, and one that I felt confident in given my first-hand understanding of the disease. 我见证了病人们日复一日的旅程——希望, 失望, 化疗和其他治疗的挑战, 不幸的是, 意识到自己无能为力的悲痛. 然后我和我母亲一起经历了这一切. 几年后, 我哥哥被诊断出患有结肠癌, 我发现自己又一次站在他身边，踏上了那段艰难的旅程.

个人观点

These experiences heavily shifted both my professional and personal focus. The pictures and images I saw on slides were now alive in the people I loved most. It made me realise all too clearly that our research was not just data points on a graph, 而是人们的家庭成员, 他们的亲人——我想为他们更加努力地奋斗.

That’s how I came to work at AstraZeneca in a position where I'm able to help cancer patients who need more and better treatment options.

在公司的13年里, I’ve worn many hats – something that has continued to stimulate my passion to learn and grow. I’ve worked at just about every stage of the drug development process from the early stages of discovery to the clinic.

I’m a strong advocate for researchers to find a way to partner with someone, 无论是一个机构, 医生还是朋友, 真正理解病人旅程的细微差别, 如果他们足够幸运，没有受到癌症的影响. More people need to understand what patients go through – because ultimately, 病人是澳门第一赌城在线娱乐工作的目的，也是澳门第一赌城在线娱乐工作的目的.

退一步，进两步

Over the years, I’ve evolved my mom’s favourite saying to my own mantra: “Focus. Finish. Next.” By breaking things up into small, manageable pieces, you can solve any problem. Science is complex, as is life, and it’s easy to get distracted by setbacks or roadblocks.

I use my experiences with my family to help inspire me to ensure other patients and their loved ones one day may not have to suffer the same pain I did. There’s an incredible gratification in seeing results from clinical trials and knowing we’re making a difference. 即使不是我的家人，也是别人的家人. 这对我很重要.

这就是科学之旅. 澳门第一赌城在线娱乐今天看到的成功是建立在对过去的学习之上的. 作为科学家，澳门第一赌城在线娱乐从每一次失败中学习，这样澳门第一赌城在线娱乐才能做得更好. The recent progress we’ve made with our antibody drug conjugate (ADC) portfolio at AstraZeneca is no exception. We have a particular focus in this space because unlike conventional chemotherapy treatments, 哪些会损害健康细胞, ADCs are targeted medicines that deliver chemotherapy agents to cancer cells, 哪些可以对患者产生影响.¹

With ADCs, I believe all those inches we’ve travelled over the years of cancer research and care are truly starting to add up to a point where these medicines may replace the traditional chemotherapy approach of attacking every cell in the body, creating new standards of care that are more targeted with fewer side effects. 通过澳门第一赌城在线娱乐强大的ADC临床开发计划, we’ve been able to utilise these learnings to expand our in-house research and discovery – to develop more targeted treatment options for even more patients. We’re also working on radioconjugates that, in a similar way, may replace radiotherapy. It’s a thrilling time to be involved in oncology and watch the steps being taken to positively impact more patients.

从事科学工作是困难的. 会有失望. You need the resilience and perseverance that’s built from a deeper reason or understanding to keep the long-term goals of drug discovery in mind. Once you identify what it is that drives you and use it to focus on the next solution, 这就是取得突破的时候. 总有一天，会有这样的分子, 这个化合物, 那个审判，你能帮她向前走, 为真正的病人带来真正的改变.

伊莱恩的故事是澳门第一赌城在线娱乐正在进行的系列节目的一部分: 肿瘤学的开拓者, which spotlights colleagues on the AstraZeneca Oncology team who are making an impact, 无论是个人还是职业.

Reference

1.  Peters C et al. 抗体-药物偶联物作为新型抗癌化疗药物. Biosci Rep. 2015;35(4):e00225. 2015年7月14日出版. 可在:http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov / 26182432 /. 

Veeva ID: Z4-54020
编制日期:2023年4月