TrailblAZers in Oncology:
Life-changing directions

Individual experiences often drive professional purpose

"Inch by inch, life is a cinch. Yard by yard, life is hard."

Growing up, this was one of my mom’s favourite sayings. She said it often when I was overwhelmed or panicked about the future. I might have rolled my eyes then, but it’s a message that has remained with me long after I lost her. To me, the saying is about resilience and holding on. It helped me through the grief of losing both her and my brother to cancer.

I still rely on it today. 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. But having lost two of the closest people in the world to me to cancer, I know that setbacks can often feel personal. “Inch by inch …” – I can hear my mom remind me in those moments. 

Inspired early on

Growing up, I was always the kid who loved science. At 14, my English teacher gave us an assignment to outline what credentials and discoveries are required to be published in a journal. My pick was a biochemistry journal and from that day forward, I committed myself to earning my doctorate and becoming a published author in that same journal, ideally studying cancer cell biology. When I lost my mother, and then my brother to cancer, 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. I worked to find a clinical trial that my mother was eligible for, and one that I felt confident in given my first-hand understanding of the disease. I had seen patients through that day-to-day journey – the hope, the disappointment, the challenges of chemotherapy and other treatments, and unfortunately too often, the grief of realising nothing more could be done. And I then lived through it with my mother. A few years later, my brother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and I found myself beside him on that difficult journey once more.

A personal perspective

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, but people’s family members, their loved ones – and I wanted to fight even harder for them.

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.

In my 13 years at the Company, 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, whether it be an institution, doctor or friend, and truly understand the nuances of the patient journey, if they are lucky enough to not be personally impacted by cancer. More people need to understand what patients go through – because ultimately, patients are why we do what we do and who we do it for.

One step back, two steps forward

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. Even if it couldn’t be my family, it is someone's family. And that matters to me.

This is the scientific journey. The success we see today is built on learnings from the past. As scientists, we learn from every failure so we can do better. 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, which can damage healthy cells, ADCs are targeted medicines that deliver chemotherapy agents to cancer cells, which can make an impact for patients.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. Through our robust ADC clinical development programme, 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.

Working in science is difficult. There will be disappointments. 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, that’s when breakthroughs are made. And one day – there is going to be that molecule, that compound, that trial – that you can help move forward, making a real difference for real patients.

Elaine’s story is part of our ongoing series: TrailblAZers in Oncology, which spotlights colleagues on the AstraZeneca Oncology team who are making an impact, both personally and professionally.

Reference

1.  Peters C et al. Antibody-drug conjugates as novel anti-cancer chemotherapeutics. Biosci Rep. 2015;35(4):e00225. Published 2015 Jul 14. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26182432/. 

Veeva ID: Z4-54020
Date of preparation: April 2023