CELT Celebrates 2024's International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Posted on: 12 February 2024 in Developing the Long-acting Pipeline

Sunday 11 February was International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This day was implemented in 2015 by UNESCO and UN-Women to celebrate the critical contribution of women and girls to all fields of science and technology.

“Gender equality is a global priority for UNESCO, and the support of young girls, their education and their full ability to make their ideas heard are levers for development and peace.” - UNESCO

For 2024, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science Assembly based its agenda on the theme of ‘Women in Science Leadership: a New Era for Sustainability’. This got us thinking about the women within our own team that are key to the sustainability of our long-acting therapeutics work from both an environmental and longevity perspective. We thought immediately of our modellers.

We sat down with Dr Lorraine Ralph and Doaa Ahmed Mohamed to discuss the journeys that got them here, what their important work involves, and why it’s so paramount to the sustainability of long-acting therapeutics research.

Who are Lorraine and Doaa and how did they come to join the CELT team?

Lorraine’s journey has had a wonderfully circular nature, in that her original degree was a Pharmacology BSc at the University of Liverpool, which lead to a PhD at the University of Glasgow. The focus of Lorraine’s PhD thesis was population pharmacokinetics, this involved modelling how much we vary from person to person in how we handle medications we’re given. Our bodies absorb, metabolise and get rid of medications differently to each other and Lorraine’s PhD looked specifically at optimising doses for women with breast cancer that had spread to the liver. Lorraine later moved from working as a mathematical modeller into publications. However, when the various lockdowns changed the nature of how we work and reduced the reliance of physically being in one office, Lorraine’s family commitments changed, and everything aligned for Lorraine to return to the University of Liverpool and redirect her career back to cutting edge research.

Doaa started her work towards her current PhD studies via a Pharmaceutical Drug Modelling MSc at Uppsala University. Her journey started with a Pharmacy BSc through a University of Greenwich and MSA University collaboration. This time sparked her interest in pharmacology, so Doaa went into industry interning with several major global pharmaceutical companies. During her Master studies, she was introduced to several types of modelling but realised her favourite focused upon pharmacokinetics and she decided to pursue a PhD in that area which she is studying here at the University of Liverpool.

 

So, what exactly is modelling and why do we use it?

There is often lots of clinical data available for a given drug, so we can use that data to predict optimal doses or regimens in different situations or patient groups. Lorraine and Doaa use mathematical equations to build biological models of people, and estimate if a drug will ever reach concentrations that work so that rational decisions can be made for future research.

There are also sometimes situations where direct clinical data are not yet available. In these instances, Doaa and Lorraine use maths to build a human model of organs, tissues, etc. and utilise different data such as how the drug dissolves, how its form changes as the pH changes, etc. Using these simulated people and the drug’s data they can predict what will biologically happen after administration of the drug, and how age, gender, ethnicity, and other individual differences could change this.

The aim of modelling in this context is to reduce time and costs by testing a drug in a simulated human. By using specific parameters Lorraine and Doaa simulate virtual patients, based on particular descriptions, allowing us to virtually test drugs before committing to clinical trials. In a nutshell, before our team start a clinical trial we have already simulated virtual scenarios to avoid wasting time and money on hypotheses that are highly unlikely to succeed.

The end goal of their research is to make sure drug concentrations in the body will work and are safe. There are two levels, below one the drug is unlikely to be effective, above the other the drug is more likely to exhibit side effects and drug toxicity. Modelling is about finding dose regimens where a drug will sit between those two levels.

What are the practical applications of Lorraine and Doaa’s work?

Lorraine is currently working on a project collaborating with University of Oxford and Queens University Belfast, researching the unmet need in COVID-19 patients requiring treatment. It can take up to 10 years to get drugs to market, so we can remove that 10-year trial time by seeing if drugs which are already on the market to treat other diseases, have efficacy for treating COVID-19. Lorraine looks at drug concentrations that have an effect in a test-tube and uses models to see if it would achieve this success in a person. This cuts out unnecessary trials, as we can immediately rule out things that won’t work before a lengthy trial process. This work means we only spend time and resources on trials with the highest likelihood of success and get those drugs to patients in the quickest possible time.

Doaa is working on two parts of CELT’s Long-Acting/Extended Release Antiretroviral Resource Program (LEAP). One is drug-drug interactions (i.e. seeing how two drugs used simultaneously interact within the body and how that interaction will affect the efficacy of the treatment) and the other is to describe the long-acting pharmacokinetics of a drug that is already on the market, but is not currently in a long-acting form. Doaa takes the new long-acting formulations of the drug and tests whether they will continue to provide enough of the drug over a longer period of time, but never provide so much that there will be side effects. Some drugs are required to be taken up to three times a day making it hard for people to keep up with a drug regimen.  Yet missing a dose or not taking it at a specific time can impact efficacy, meaning it will be less effective. A long-acting medication means only taking medication once every 1-6 months rather than every day, so doses aren’t missed, and people don’t worry about their medications being seen when there is stigma around them.

How have they faced challenges within their modelling journey?

A big challenge that both Doaa and Lorraine wish they’d been readied for was learning code. The beginning in programming means learning entire new coding languages, and coming from a pharmacology background they had no basis for anything like it. Both of them felt overwhelmed, but Lorraine shifted her viewpoint to remind herself that other people do it, so she could too. To take control of those times when she felt overwhelmed, Lorraine enrolled on a free short online course at University College London before starting this role and felt much more confident for doing so.

“You realise that you just take it a step at a time, and you can do it.”

During her current work, Lorraine has also completed a further course in R-programming from the University of Liverpool. Refreshing knowledge to remain current is excellent advice for skills we use regularly to help us always feel in control of things that were previously daunting.

Doaa found the answer through a conversation with a programming friend. It can feel like we should be moving quicker than we are when we’re used to learning things we already have knowledge around, and Doaa had spent weeks struggling with a particular coding skill that her friend explained students take three years to learn. When moments before Doaa had thought she wasn’t doing good enough, that conversation flipped her view point and she saw that she was actually doing really well.

“Expecting yourself to be the same as other programmers, when they’ve been doing it for years, is not a fair comparison.”

There’s real value in both these methods and viewpoints, no matter what the new journey you’re embarking on is. Whenever we feel overwhelmed, either by acting to bring back control or reflecting on our thoughts around why we aren’t in control are excellent ways to help.

What Doaa and Lorraine want you to take away about modelling

Everyone is different, even within a patient group. If you take a drug, we need to know that a drug will be safe for everybody and how much and how often you need to take it for it to work. Despite us all being different, any medication should help everyone who needs it and hurt no one who needs it.

Lorraine and Doaa do what they do to optimise care for patients via the most effective route. Their work is important for reducing waste, reducing a medication’s impact on the environment but reducing costs in trials means that limited research money can be spent elsewhere within the research that needs it. It’s ethically and sustainably imperative for getting medications to those that need them as safely and quickly as possible.

Ultimately, modelling is about achieving the best care for patients. The constant question is ‘how does what we’re doing impact patients?’. Modelling is a treasure, that is key to helping us move towards the best personalised care.

Today is the perfect day to celebrate Lorrainne and Doaa’s achievements along with all of the achievements of the Women that are essential to the success of CELT, the University and the critical medical research occurring around the globe.

#WomenInScience

Find out more about UNESCO's International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Read more about UN Women.