Genetics Intro | Forecasting Cancer | SARS Equation | The Building Blocks of Life | X-Mice

Forecasting Cancer
By Mason Yockey

___My 'Day in Science' began early in the morning at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Darlinghurst. The Institute hosts some of the laboratories from nearby St. Vincent's Hospital and from other institutions. I signed in with the receptionist and passed through to the interior of the building.

___To a visitor, the Garvan Institute is an impressive museum of glass and spiral staircases. From the third floor, you can look up through concentric rings of offices to the geodesic ceiling. The inhabitants of these offices are members of research groups representing the Garvan Institute itself, the hospital, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and private institutes.

___I met Dr Megan Hitchins on the ninth floor. She is the supervisor of the St Vincent's Hospital Medical Oncology laboratoryoratory and a senior research fellow at UNSW. Her researchers work in the field of Oncological Genetics - the study of how genetic mutations are involved in the development of cancer.

___We spent the morning talking about her work, which focuses on colorectal cancer (cancer of the large intestine). There are two types of colorectal cancer - hereditary and sporadic. Sporadic cancers develop in persons with no family history of the disease and account for 95% of all colon cancers.

___Dr Hitchins compares the genes in normal tissue to the genes in cancerous tissue from the same individual. Her work suggests that colon cancer results from progressive damage to a gene called MLH1. This gene is involved in DNA repair, so it is not surprising that, when damaged, it can increase the rate of cancer formation. However, her work also shows that mutations in neighboring genes occur before MLH1 becomes affected. Such mutations may provide an early warning signal for colorectal cancer.

___Dr Hitchins' field of research is small-scale in terms of the number of scientists devoted to it, but it offers hope to a very large patient base. One in twenty Australians will suffer some form of colon cancer some time in their lifetime. This figure is expected to increase due to current unhealthy diets. With a million patients expected in Australia alone, the benefits of her work may be widely felt.

___In the late morning, Megan began to collate data on her computer. Though she is introduced as a supervisor, her duties are far more extensive than this title suggests. She examines the data that her research assistants generate, and she will eventually write journal articles based on the analysis of this data. She drafts applications for the research grants that fund her laboratory, and she also teaches. Some of her research assistants are her PhD students.

___While I was taking notes, one of her research assistants showed her a Powerpoint presentation on a type of cancer called Adenomatous Polyposis Coli. He was going to present the laboratory’s progress to a group of experts on the disease. Megan helped him to edit the presentation, and she advised him to speak concisely and not preach. It occurred to me that this advice would be familiar to all teachers.

___After lunch, we relocated. Megan was working with a complicated set of DNA sequences, and her computer does not have the programs to handle it. She moved down three levels to her old office to use a more powerful computer that has the necessary programs installed. As we moved around the laboratory, I caught glimpses of the daily bustle of activities. Andy, a postdoctoral worker, was running an RNA prep. Nimita, a research assistant, was boiling an electrophoresis gel using nothing more advanced or scientific than a microwave oven. Professor Ward, Megan's boss, was urgently travelling to and fro from the laboratory to the hospital.

______"How did Megan get here?" I wondered. Her only answer was that she could not see herself anywhere else. Science has been her only interest since young and only focus in school (other than sports, that is!). She received her PhD from the University of London in 1999 and did several years of postdoctoral work. With these qualifications, and extra experience, she found her current job. It is a job she looks forward to each morning.

___We returned to Megan's office once everything was completed. I left her at five o'clock, as she had an appointment with Professor Ward. My 'Day in Science' had been intriguing, but what kind of day had it been for Megan? A normal one, as far as normal goes. For Megan, there is no such thing as an average day. Her only routine tasks are the answering of e-mails and telephone calls. Sometimes an entire day, if not week, will be devoted to a single task, and everything else will wait.

___Megan's ideal 'Day in Science' would be one without paperwork or deadlines. It would be a day where she could run experiments, examine the results, draw a few tentative conclusions, and then plan on further experiments for the following day. In other words, it would be a day where she could get down to the business of being a scientist.

Genetics Intro | Forecasting Cancer | SARS Equation | The Building Blocks of Life | X-Mice