Our work in research encompasses a journey of investigatory exploration, not only across the fields of science but also in our career journeys. Recently, I've had the opportunity to join the Markey Post-baccalaureate Fellows Program with the Markey Cancer Center, and I've learned the importance of maintaining a love for curiosity and discovery.
At the program, I've rotated in a couple labs and I've earned great insight already. Here, I wanted to share some advice I received from one such rotation.
There are numerous factors to take in consideration when deciding which labs are suitable for career growth and scientific exploration. Mentorship is probably the most important, in my opinion.
Later, I will write a post for determining which labs are suitable for trainees and how to assess the quality of that lab through rotations as a mentee in science. However, for this post, I simply wanted to talk about a particular piece of anecdotal advice I received from my PI in a lab during a rotation.
Before entering into a new lab, I find it important to arrange meetings with new mentors to discuss the things you can bring to the lab and the resources the lab has available for you. During my meeting with my new PI, Dr. Z (I will keep his name anonymous), we discussed my previous experiences in cancer science and his work on a unique enzyme that plays a role in both cancer and metabolism. After our science talk, he delved into an important story about his life and work.
Dr. Z shared his anecdote. I will paraphrase it here.
When I completed my postdoctoral training at MD Anderson, I continued my work in the research program of Dr. MC Hung. Originally, I studied neurodegenerative diseases, Like Parkinson's, but when my mother passed away from breast cancer, I shifted my focus to cancer research. In Dr. Hung's lab, we studied an oncogene in breast cancer.
Our work was credited for pioneering the exploration of a newly discovered oncogene, Her2/neu, in HER2+ breast cancers. Dr. Hung was one of the first investigators to characterize the activity of the oncogene in breast carcinoma and we contributed to the development of an antibody treatment to target Her2/neu. The antibody, famously known as Herceptin (trastuzamab), was revolutionary.
Evidently, Herceptin was monumental in the fight against cancer, as the antibody treatment is effective against >90% if HER2+ breast cancer and today, it is used against other carcinomas.
As I continued my work in Dr. Hung's Lab, a few colleagues had realized my potential to thrive as an independent investigator in my own laboratory. When we discussed the future of my career, they advised, "[Dr. Z], if you want to have a significant career, you should build a program away from Dr. Hung's shadow." Basically, my colleague had indicated that my career was ready for something new, a transformation.
Hence, I moved to a research program at the NIH. The transition from an academic institution like MD Anderson to a government agency like the NIH was transformative. Luckily for me, I did not have to teach students, there were no students, and I did not have to write grants, I was right at the NIH!
There, I met some colleagues and mentors that shaped my perspective on scientific investigation. One day, I brough an idea to a few colleagues. They pondered what I had said and simply remarked, "[Dr. Z], your idea is crazy."
Crazy, how? I wondered. The idea made sense to me. Perhaps my idea would need some further explaining, but then they continued.
"Crazy in that your idea is not connected to anything, it is not associated with the current literature. That is crazy in science."
My conversation with my colleagues at the NIH was the most memorable of my career, it stuck with me. My mentors had explained to me that "crazy" in science is different from wildly illogical, impossible, or silly, although it may appear that way to some. Instead, a crazy idea is when our thoughts deviate from the confines of the literature.
When I introduced my idea to my colleagues at the NIH, it was not simply a thought conceived from the literature, as if drawing a new study from the future directions sections of a paper. That is thinking in ways in which the literature guides our research. That is hypothesis-driven research. Still useful but not crazy.
My idea was not illogical, it was just a few steps, or leaps, ahead from the current science available to support it. I was looking where no else has yet to look. I was not simply filling in a research gap, I was generating an extension into the unknowns.
After a few years, I maintained my crazy ideas encouraged from my mentor at the NIH. When I joined the Markey Cancer Center at the University of Kentucky, this framework enabled me to discover a few connections in cancer and obesity that have a unique link to lipid metabolism. There was a key enzyme with a contradictory role as a calorie marker and a target for both the comorbidities of obesity and treating cancer survival pathways.
Reflecting on Dr. Z's recount of his most memorable lesson as a scientist, which has now been shared here, I've earned a foundation for how to conduct discovery science beyond filling in the gaps in the literature, not that that science is any less significant.
I've realized that, while hypothesis-driven research is critical, it often keeps scientists tethered to filling small gaps in the existing literature. Discovery science—what some might call “crazy ideas”—pushes beyond those boundaries. It allows researchers to define new niches or even overturn established conclusions.
Defining a new niche, in my opinion, is what is most important for building a research program as a physician-scientist.
We will see how true that is in my later career. For now, I am only a post-baccalaureate student.