Lab Gantt chart

Our lab Gantt chart, modelled by current undergraduate interns Ray Yan and Preesha Jain! It covers 185 lab members, based in VIB and KU Leuven in Belgium, and the Babraham Institute and University of Cambridge in the UK. An average of 14 team members joining annually in Belgium (largely because of the fantastic Erasmus program allowing mobility across Europe!) and 8 team members joining annually in the UK. Median duration of 12 month stay in Belgium (with Masters students being the median lab member) and 18 month stay in the UK (with PhD students being the median lab member, but none yet to graduate!). A whole lot of memories and nostalgia in this picture!

Black excellence in cancer research at Cambridge

Black scientists in Cambridge are driving change to help create a cancer research sector that better represents the wider population.

Read the full article, including the profile of our very own Magda Ali!

Magda Ali is in her final year of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre MRes + PhD in Cancer Biology funded studentship at the Department of Pathology and Lucy Cavendish College.

After graduating from King’s College London with a degree in Biomedical Science, she spent two years working as a scientist on cell and gene therapy assets at GlaxoSmithKline, before beginning her PhD researching immune cell trafficking into solid tumours.

“I loved my undergraduate degree, every part of it, I found it fascinating!” she said. “In my final year I studied the biology of cancer and it felt like that was what everything had been leading up to. It put all of the things I’d studied up to that point into the context of this horrible disease, that dysregulates everything and co-opts all of these pathways that normally work well, using them to its own advantage. I found the complexity of the disease really interesting, particularly because of cancers resistance mechanisms. It’s the biggest challenge.”

During her degree, Magda specialised in cancer immunology. “I was really lucky to get a final year degree project in a lab working on immunotherapies – it was becoming a hot field at that time so it was a great opportunity.”

And off the back of the lab experience she built up during her degree, Magda landed a position at GSK, where she worked for two years before applying for her PhD.

She said: “Not many people from my school went on to University to study for an undergraduate degree, let alone to study for a PhD, but it was something I’d known I wanted to do for a long time.

“It’s important that there is representation of all races and heritages when it comes to research and running clinical trials, and not just at the point of developing the drug – but at the point of thinking about which questions to ask. We need diverse minds and diverse backgrounds to ask questions that are relevant for everybody, to make sure there’s equal access to healthcare. Education is such a privilege, and although some people make a huge effort, I think in general we can do much better at communicating science to the public.

“After my PhD, I hope to work as a science communicator to bridge the gap between science and the public.”

Lab photo

The Golden Pipette

Science plays the long game, but Adrian Liston celebrates the small achievements his team makes along the way. 

Danielle Gerhard, PhD, writing for The Scientist

Hanging on the wall of immunologist Adrian Liston's laboratory at the University of Cambridge is a commemorative plaque. Engraved are the names of laboratory members who received the Golden Pipette Award, an annual honor that recognizes incremental advancements and team players. It may or may not grant the recipient the Midas Touch, but Liston reflected on how the tradition fosters a sense of community.

What is the Golden Pipette origin story?

In 2016, we had a special PhD candidate graduating from the lab. James Dooley had been a technician in my lab for several years prior to his graduation. To celebrate his achievements and the impact he had on the careers of others in the team, we painted one of his pipettes gold. The gesture was well received, so each year, we award the pipette to an individual who made a significant contribution to the team.

What does the Golden Pipette represent?

Science is tough. We work at the very limits of human knowledge, which means we constantly fail. The Golden Pipette tradition is one of the ways we create a positive culture and supportive environment. Big achievements, such as a paper, take a long time, so it’s important to celebrate the small successes: generating a transgenic mouse; developing a new protocol; the heroic effort that ends up as supplementary figure 12. It also signals our values and priorities: imagination, creativity, robust science, and team contributions. 

How did your team respond to the Golden Pipette?

It seemed silly at first, but the tradition has outlasted everyone in the group. It serves as a visual reminder that we’re part of a greater project. In a recent hiring round, several people said that they look forward to the chance of winning the Golden Pipette.

Read the story as told in The Scientist...

Becoming a Scientist: The Graphic Novel

Our latest project has just been released: Becoming a Scientist: The Graphic Novel!

The novel follows the stories of the amazing team members in the lab (or, at least, those team members who have been around since last October when we started this project!). We follow their story in becoming a scientist: the barriers they had to overcome, the role-models who helped them on the way, and the motivation that drove them to enter STEM.

This is a unique project for us, because it isn't about our science. It is about us as scientists. Where we came from, and how we got here. None of us were destined for science, yet somehow here we are, working together to better the world...

Our amazing illustrator, Yulia Lapko, brings to life each person's story. We have Magda, daughter of Somali refugees, drawing strength from her mother's sacrifice and equally determined to help others in turn. We have Alvaro, who barely managed to get into school growing up in Peru, and has now made it to Cambridge with a ripper of an under-graduate project. James, who took a long and winding route, overcoming every disadvantage life gives a foster kid, and yet somehow beating the odds and now helping others succeed. Stevi made the transition from patient to researcher, and Tombi brings her mission from Zimbabwe to help the global ubuntu. I realised, looking around the lab, that I could talk about how inspiring I find literally every person - so I put them all into a book!

I draw inspiration from these amazing team members. I could have written this story at any point over the past fifteen years - we have nearly 200 amazing alumni, each with their own unique story. I wrote these stories to provide role-models to anyone thinking about starting a career in science. Science is not for the privileged few. Science is for anyone who has ever asked "why?", and anyone who is too stubborn to know when to stop asking! Take a look into these stories - if we can succeed in science, you can too!

The book is live now to read at Issuu, and will be released soon in print. If you want to support more innovative projects in broadening participation from our lab, drop us a donation!

In the news

The Cambridge Independent

Improving research culture within your lab

The companion piece to our article on nurturing a positive research culture at the organisation level, our new article should hit closer to home for most researchers - how to nurture a positive research culture at your individual lab level!

Running a research team is not simply about producing important research findings. It is important for the team leader to also focus on creating an environment that is a positive experience for the team members and a place for them to build further careers from. Focus on the culture of the team feeds back into the quality of the research, aiding impactful, reproducible and ethical research. Part of building a positive research environment comes from your role as a leader, and interacting with you team with kindness and integrity. However you can aid this process by engineering the structure of your team and through thoughtful consideration of your language and actions. In this article we discuss several tactics to research team leadership that may help team leaders create a positive environment for their team members.

Read at Wellcome Open Research

Liston-Dooley lab on The Naked Scientists

I was interviewed about our latest Immunity paper on tissue-resident Tregs by Chris Smith from The Naked Scientists. If you are interested, the segment airs in the UK on BBC 5 Live Sunday morning 6am and in Australia on ABC Radio National Friday night at 10pm. Otherwise, download the podcast and hear what we are up to!

New finding about regulatory T cells could help treat diseases such as multiple sclerosis

In EuroNews

Researchers at the University of Cambridge say their discovery of “new rules of the immune system” could improve the treatment of inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS).

Scientists have discovered that regulatory T cells, a type of white blood cell, constantly move throughout the body looking for and repairing damaged tissue.

It was believed that regulatory T cells exist as multiple populations restricted to specific parts of the body.

Now, researchers have found that they roam around the body as a single large population of cells and target areas of inflammation, which destroys nerves and leads to a loss of movement.