It might be the middle of summer, but white-coated men and women are working away behind the scenes, fully focused on their laboratory tests.
Just as Indiana Jones isn’t a typical archaeologist, Dr Frankenstein isn’t your normal scientific boffin, for whom genius tends to be an infinite capacity for taking pains.
Yet, while they might not seek the limelight and Eureka moments are few and far between countless hours of methodical, meticulous research, people such as Aberdeen University professor, Zosia Miedzybrodzka, are enhancing our knowledge in potentially life-saving areas at the helm of the Orkney cancer gene project.
When she first travelled to the Granite City to study medicine, she soon developed an interest in genetics. “It was 1990, the cystic fibrosis gene had just been found, and I was given the chance to work on that a couple of years into my medical training.”
It was an exciting time, because the scientific community hardly knew anything about genes and Aberdeen became a real nucleus for taking genetics into patient care.
And now, 30 years later, Zosia is leading what is a critically important initiative.
Research has drawn interest from around the world
There’s no underestimating the possible significance of the Orkney trial, which explains why it has attracted international attention.
As Zosia said: “We had over 1.5 million hits online overnight when we published our papers in March from people all over the world. We have had over 1,000 queries to our helpline, half of which were from people within Scotland, but there were also some from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and further afield.”
The research is so important because, as she says, it’s the difference between “waiting for cancer to get you” or having the opportunity to “either pick it up early or make the informed decision to have preventative surgery to stop it happening at all.”
The Orcadians have been terrific
Zosia and her colleagues have been blown away by the positivity of the people in Orkney and there has been an overwhelming endorsement of what they’re doing, which has allowed them to raise funding to offer testing within the community in record time.
They started screening in Westray two weeks ago, have already surpassed their target and have had to restock testing kits twice. But the venture doesn’t stop now.
As Zosia told the Press & Journal this week: “What we want to do is take it beyond Westray to the whole of Scotland.”
The professor was recently named the UK’s Science Pioneer at the Woman & Home Amazing Women Awards and admits it was a nice accolade to receive out of the blue.
She already has fellowships and research awards, but this was something different.
Zosia said: “I don’t know if I would call myself a pioneer. I see it as trying to get the best value for healthcare by taking grounded innovation that can really help people and making it happen.”
Which sounds pretty trailblazing to the rest of us.
