ELRIG Drug Discovery Liverpool 2023 – with Maria Ramos Zapatero
Interview by Alicia Overall, Domainex Ltd.
Maria Ramos Zapatero is currently a Postdoctoral fellow at the Bodenmiller Lab at ETH Zurich. There she is working with breast cancer tumours, understanding ecosystem dynamics. While at ELRIG’s Drug Discovery 2023 Liverpool, she presented her work previously carried out in Chris Tape’s lab at UCL, ‘Stromal Regulation of Patient-Derived Organoid Drug Responses’. Her work utilised organoids generated from colorectal tumour cells as a model system, enabling the monitoring of the responses to different therapies. Her talk highlighted work in which 10 patients’ samples generated organoids. Each patient organoid is subject to twelve treatments, each in different concentrations, with and without fibroblasts present. The large data set gained enabled great insights into therapeutics and their consequences. Furthermore, the analysis of the data set itself was an impressive feat and shows the ingenuity of Maria and her team. After her talk, I sat down with Maria and discussed her time at ELRIG, her career, her work, advice and everything in between.
- What draws you to present at ELRIG?
As someone interested in drug responses, I thought ELRIG was a good opportunity to get an insight into how other researchers are investigating and looking into resistance. It was also nice that there were multiple rooms, and various streams on different topics, meaning you could visit and listen to various topics, always finding something relevant to my work.
- Is there anything about ELRIG that stands out to you?
As mentioned, there were various streams and rooms on different topics. There were also a vast number of vendors too, this all makes it comparable to EACR (European Association for Cancer Research).
- Have you attended ELRIG before?
- If so, has the event differed or anything that has stood out this year compared to previous years.
- Would you come back again?
It was my first time, and I would come back!
- What do you think makes ELRIG special/ different to other conferences?
It was a large commercial conference, and you had the ability to speak with different vendors. Also, it was clear a large effort had been made by those attending. It was clear there was also a conscious effort in knowing who was attending. Shown clearly in offering lunch for everyone, not many other conferences do this.
Your Career
- Have there been any challenges you have faced in your career?
If I compare myself to other peers, I realize I have been very lucky with my labs in that they have been well-funded, enabling me to develop my creativity and pursue ambitious ideas. So, while the budget has not been an issue for me, for others it can be an issue. I do wonder if funding could be better distributed. For instance, in academia, there is more creative research, but it can be limited by the lab’s economy, so limiting creativity. Saying this does make me realize that I have been and still am very lucky.
- Have you faced any issues as a woman in STEM?
No direct issues, but I would say there is a strong bias. Especially towards male scientists presenting at conferences. Although, I cannot comment on ELRIG as I was not able to attend both days, I have been to conferences where there were 4/5 women presenting against 20 men. Even for ELRIG and me, it was my boss who was invited, but he could not attend so I did in his place.
Also, most speakers are seniors, they have longer careers and have more experience, so they also tend to be invited to present more. However, science has changed so much. There can be smaller labs with less science to show but the younger PI’s could have very innovative things to present which could be of interest to other people too.
- Anything you would have done differently in your career?
I have been fortunate, from when I was a student, to internships, and then my job opportunities and PhD positions. I could travel too so I have gained international experience; this was valuable when selected for my PhD.
My PhD has also greatly benefited me. I am a Biologist by training, but during my PhD I had to learn about coding and computational science. Now during my post-doc, I am very lucky to have been forced to learn both wet and dry lab skills, this has been key in getting where I am now and I am now able to perform better science. I can take on more ambitious projects, as I can do both the science and analysis properly.
There are scenarios where those in wet labs are scared of big data, they do not have a computational scientist in the lab which makes it more challenging for them to analyse large and complex datasets. In my case, was fortunate to collaborate with a maths PhD student and we worked cooperatively. I had the questions and he had the tools. He was heavily involved and could see what was working and what wasn’t within the algorithm, but I had the biology understanding, so was able to draw the conclusions. It was a team effort, making the algorithm, asking the questions, and testing if it was working. I wouldn’t have been able to do the analysis alone and he would not have had the questions to ask.
- What motivated you to join science?
I love learning, through science or other things. Working in academia you are constantly learning new things every day. I love the pure curiosity and learning more and more, whilst not doing the same thing every day.
Science is a field where you can never know everything – there is always space for more.
- Any advice for an Early Careers Professional?
Teamwork is important, you are never going to know everything, so finding strong collaborations that benefit your research and bring means to it is also the key to good science. I have learnt a lot from my colleagues.
- What led you into this research?
My PhD in Dr Chris Tape’s lab helped me build a strong foundation in single-cell analysis and method development, this led me to my post-doc position at the Bodenmiller Lab. I enjoy trying to improve methods in fundamentals and enjoy method development.
- Where do you see the future of your research going?
Science has changed enormously. We are now able to acquire a large data set, but there lies a situation where the technology is going too fast and the data analysis is not fast enough, there is a struggle to find tools to analyse the data sets. For example, the data now being produced in my lab is larger than ever, but previously there was no way to analyse it – now we have the algorithm. We can obtain these large data sets and analyse it after. Hopefully the future brings new standard algorithms and analyses for large and complex datasets.
- Interesting fact someone wouldn’t know by your CV?
My decisions in my careers have not been based on science but rather what I want in life.
After the Coronavirus-19 outbreak, I wanted to go to the US, so I did, I got my position at Yale. After, for my post-doc position, I wanted to be in nature, and that is why is moved to Switzerland.
The paths in my CV have been mapped out by my life choices. My priority has been my life.
