Features

Two Oxford academics have been selected as this year's New Generation Thinkers by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Eleanor Lybeck and Thomas Simpson are among ten early career researchers selected by an expert panel, after a nationwide search for the best academic ideas to be shared through broadcast. They will have the opportunity to make programmes for BBC Radio 3 and other outlets.

Eleanor Lybeck is a lecturer in English in the Faculty of English Language and Literature and Trinity College. Her research is on the history and practice of popular performance from the turn of the 19th century, including the story of her great-grandfather who made his name as a stage clown and joined the D’Oyly Carte company performing around the world in comic operas.

When Eleanor’s father disappeared from her own life in 1993 he took with him the remnants of her great-grandfather’s career, which she has now recovered and stitched together to tell the tale of this once celebrated and now forgotten figure of the theatre. She has explored how the circus has been a theme running through Irish culture. Her new project will explore how contemporary political rhetoric has, since Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, appealed to voters through literary and cultural allusion.

She says: 'I’ve been researching the biography of my great-grandfather, the comic actor and patter baritone Albert James, for more than a decade. In that time, I’ve told his story and the story of the marvellous worlds in which he moved at the turn of the nineteenth century through poetry, creative non-fiction, and theatre itself. Becoming one of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers is such an exciting opportunity, as it’s a chance for me to reintroduce Albert and other once famed, now forgotten stars of Edwardian London’s theatreland to an international audience.' 

Tom Simpson is a lecturer in Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government. He is engaged on research into trust; how it works, what is its significance in society and how cultures of trust can be restored. As a former officer with the Royal Marines Commandos he also worked on the ethics of war, exploring the intersection of war and technology. This includes the ethics of lethal automated weapons and surveillance and how this raises political questions far deeper than those considered in the public debate up to now such as what liberty is and why it matters.

He says: ‘I’m delighted by the chance that being one of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers gives to explore some of the deeper issues behind the headlines. Trust has steadily declined in the last decades, and this is affecting our economy, our politics, and life in local communities. I’m interested in how we can restore trust. As a former Royal Marine, I’m also concerned by questions around how the military and security agencies use technologies like artificial intelligence and the internet. Some of these questions are new, and others are as old as philosophy.'

Previously Oxford winners include Leah Broad, Kylie Murray, Daniel Lee, Will Abberley, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and Jonathan Healey.

‘I would not be a teenager again if you paid me.’  If this statement perhaps sounds familiar, it is with good reason.

When people reflect on their teenage years it is not always in the fondest context. Along the journey from childhood to teenager, and then finally, onto adulthood, the brain changes in a lot of ways. Known as the control centre of the human body, the brain is responsible for our thoughts, actions and how we function in general.

Researchers at the University of Oxford have been working to understand this pivotal developmental period and a new animation from Oxford Sparks, the University’s popular digital science portal, has shone a light on this project. The animation offers a glimpse inside the teenage mind, and highlights the team's efforts to understand these developmental changes, and how much they influence peoples' behaviours during this time.

During this time three key changes take place, that combined, go some way to explaining the rollercoaster of emotions experienced during adolescence:

• Development slows down in the parts of the brain that control our attention span,  impulsive behaviours and the ability to both resist distraction and make decisions;
• Increased development and functional ability in the areas of the brain that control people's 'gut reactions', such as emotions, appetite and mood;
• The communication ('cross-talk') between these parts of the brain becomes increasingly efficient.

In terms of brain development, adolescence represents a ‘perfect storm’ for teenagers, which explains some of the highs and lows associated with the period. These include, the pitfalls of taking more risks and increased social anxiety or, on a more positive note, the desire to try new things and have more experiences.

View the video within the context of your own teenage years here:

As Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry, a mother of two and one of Oxford University’s most successful entrepreneurs, developing both the spinout companies MuOx and OxStem, Professor Angela Russell wears many hats. She met with ScienceBlog to discuss the progress of women in science in the 21^st century, her journey from academia to a successful business woman and her advice to anyone following in her footsteps.

What does your work in Organic Chemistry involve?

I run an academic research group aiming to develop new drugs to treat devastating degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and heart failure. The technologies we develop are helping us to answer fundamental clinical questions and understand how different substances affect regeneration processes in the human body. Our work is incredibly rewarding and has the potential to positively impact millions of peoples’ lives.

OxStem founders Professor Dame Kay Davies, Professor Angela Russell and Professor Steve Davies

Has becoming an entrepreneur always been a goal for you?

I always thought I would be a pure academic scientist, so the business side of things was totally unexpected. Often when you make a scientific discovery the most exciting part of the project is seeing it applied, but it easy to become removed from the development process in academia, and, it got me thinking why not just do it myself?

How did your journey into science commercialisation evolve?

I have co-founded two successful Biotech companies and both evolved quite organically. Mentorship has been key. Professor Steve Davies in particular has been a huge influence on my career and a co-founder of both MuOx and OxStem. As an entrepreneur himself, he has always encouraged me down the road of the commercialisation of science.

How did you go about commercialising your research and developing a spinout company?

MuOx (Muscle Oxford) built on a longstanding collaboration with Professor Dame Kay Davies, looking for a new treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Our original findings had led to the formation of VASTOx (now Summit Therapeutics plc) who developed the drug ezutromid into clinical trials. We wanted to discover new drugs that could improve on ezutromid’s effectiveness and went back to designing new substances that took the original research to the next level; MuOx.

Often with spinout development selling your product can be a real challenge, but our ongoing relationship with Summit meant they bought us very quickly. The company was spun out in 2012 and bought for five million pounds, by Summit in 2013. We continue to run an extremely important collaborative research programme with Summit developing these new drugs for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

The technologies we develop are helping us to understand how different substances affect regeneration processes in the human body. Our work is incredibly rewarding and has the potential to positively impact millions of peoples’ lives.

What was the biggest learning curve from the development?

Building a strong case for product development that can be easily communicated to anyone - scientists, investors and general public alike is not easy. But if you don’t get it right, you won’t get the investment. As scientists, we get used to talking to each other in scientific code, but it’s just jargon to anyone else. People can’t support or engage with something they don’t understand, so I had to learn quickly how to communicate to people with varying science knowledge, like patients and the general public. You have to build an exciting case and believe in it yourself: ‘not only is this exciting science, but we can deliver on it and change people’s lives.’ If you don’t believe in your product why should anyone else?

How did OxStem evolve?

MuOx proved that we could translate science effectively, and it gave me the confidence to go for it on a big scale with Oxstem, which was effectively MuOx 2.0. It is exactly the same premise, a company developing drugs to treat diseases. But where MuOx focused specifically on muscle degenerative disease, OxStem aims to develop a platform to treat any degenerative or age-related disease.

Was building the company very different the second time around?

Oxstem isn’t a single company, it is an umbrella company, and we spinout successful daughter subsidiaries, each with a different disease focus – four so far. As an academic research development, it has been hard and time consuming to communicate the value of this structure to university stakeholders. We had to outline the structural benefits and challenges, such as how the model could work within existing financial structures, management of intellectual property and so on. It took a long time, but we achieved our goal, and in May 2016 we hit our £17 million target needed to get the company off the ground.

Professor Russell co-founded OxStem, the company is currently working to develop a regenerative treatment that could reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's. Photo credit: OXSTEM

Professor Russell co-founded OxStem, the company is currently working to develop a regenerative treatment that could reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's. Photo credit: OXSTEM

What was the biggest challenge you faced setting up a spinout?

Getting people to believe in your idea in the early stages is really difficult, particularly with funders. Investment is essential to progressing opportunities from lab experiments, to something that will be of benefit to patients in the long run. It takes a lot of time and patience and you have to be up front with people, making sure that they understand what they are getting into. Yes it is a lucrative investment opportunity, but there are risks.

Professor Russell playing with her two children

What advice would you give to someone looking to commercialise their research?

Identify a clear market need for your product, make a clear development plan and a list of reasons why you are the only one that can deliver on it. That is the way to be successful. Being actively involved in progressing your research is so rewarding. If you truly believe in your idea, this is the route for you.

Generally getting government or charity funding for discovery science is straight forward, but doing so for an idea that you want to translate into a research led, spin-out is not so easy; dubbed the “valley of death”. You have to have proof of concept, and show that your idea is going to work.

What projects are you currently working on?

The bulk of my work focuses on the development of new drugs to tackle degenerative and age-related diseases. For instance in collaboration with Professor Francis Szele we are looking at treating diseases like Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative conditions and how symptoms can be reversed. A disease like Alzheimer’s is characterised by the progressive loss of neurones in the brain, and we are working to develop a regenerative treatment that will replenish these neurones, reversing the symptoms of the condition in the process. It will make a tremendous difference to people’s lives. If all goes to plan, we will be ready to run a clinical trial in the next three to five years.

You have to build an exciting case for your product, and believe in it yourself. If you don’t believe in it why should anyone else?

Has being a woman in science posed any specific challenges for you?

I have never been discouraged or made to feel that I can’t achieve things because I am a woman. Nor have I ever felt it was an advantage either. I think that is really important. We can’t solve gender bias against women, by deflecting it to men. We have to create an environment where it is better for everybody. I am heavily involved in the Athena SWAN Charter, self-assessment process, and it’s not about creating more opportunities for women, but for everybody, and achieving equality across the board.

How do you think these opportunities can be created?

I think we have to change the working culture, and focus more on valuing people for what they contribute, not how long a day they work. In the past there was a more blinkered view that a brutally long working day was the only way to succeed, which made managing a family and a career almost impossible, but that is changing.

We can’t solve gender bias by deflecting it to men. We have to build an environment that is better for everybody. Not just creating more opportunities for women, but  achieving equality across the board.

What motivated you to become a scientist?

My dad was always supportive of my ambitions. When I was 14 he told me ‘you’ll never be happy with a desk job.’ He was right. I’ve always been driven by a desire to carry out research for the betterment of human health. Chemistry was a subject I absolutely loved at school and saw as fundamental to all science because it underpins and impacts so many other disciplines, including medicine.

What advice would you give to someone embarking on a career in STEM?

The decisions that you make at the beginning of your career are important, and can impact your whole future, so try and think long term wherever possible. Everyone makes mistakes, but recognising when you aren’t on the right track and correcting it quickly makes it easier to stay on course. I came to Oxford to study Biochemistry, but realised quickly that it wasn’t for me. Two weeks before my first year exams I told my tutor I wanted to change to Chemistry. I flipped straight into the second year of a Chemistry degree, and almost gave my tutor a heart attack, but it was exactly the right decision for me.

If you hadn’t been a scientist what was your plan B?

I would have been a chef. I actually think chemists and chefs have a lot in common. They experiment with flavour combinations and we scientists cook up drugs that we want to use for clinical use. There is nothing more rewarding than cooking a nice dinner and watching your children tuck in.

In her spare time Professor Russell enjoys cooking for her family, and has found parallels between chemistry and cooking. Chefs experiment with flavour combinations, while scientists cook up drugs for clinical use. Image credit: SHUTTERSTOCK

In her spare time Professor Russell enjoys cooking for her family, and has found parallels between chemistry and cooking. Chefs experiment with flavour combinations, while scientists cook up drugs for clinical use. Image credit: SHUTTERSTOCK

The annual meeting of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, is taking place in Beijing this week. The meeting of China’s national legislature, which runs until March 15, is often seen as a guide for how China’s leadership is thinking.

Rana Mitter, who is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China and director of the University of Oxford’s China Centre, expects that housing and the environment will be among the main themes of meeting.

‘A lot of the real stuff is done behind the scenes but I would expect certain themes to be spoken about,’ he says. ‘One of those is housing. As in many countries around the world, housing is becoming increasingly expensive for China’s middle class and much of the property growth in China has been fuelled by a boom in credit, which isn’t sustainable, so I’d expect to see some questions about the economy and how housing fits into that.

‘Something else they should also be talking about is the environment. It is well known that China’s cities are now suffering from incredibly bad pollution, the kind of thing that can actually force people not to go outside because they may immediately have a problem with breathing and the Chinese government knows that is not sustainable in the long term, so I hope the NPC will be talking about ways to tackle those issues.’

Professor Mitter also discussed a recent BBC story in which the reporter had his camera damaged and was forced to sign a confession for trying to interview a ‘petitioner’ – that is, someone who visits Beijing to take their grievances to the State Bureau of Letters and Calls because they have been denied justice through their local courts.

Professor Mitter says this heavy-handed response is related to the holding of the National People’s Congress. ‘This is what happens right around major events like this - Beijing goes on lockdown, so it’s disheartening but not entirely surprising to see how swiftly they have cracked down on the petitioners,’ he says. ‘At other times of the year, and particularly outside Beijing at the local level in China, you will see a certain amount more success.

‘There are various mechanisms that the petitioners can use – not just using a letter but also these days using social media and e-government to try and make their complaints known. So while it is patchy and not the same as you would have in a liberal democracy such as the UK, there is a certain amount of permeability in the system to allow complaints to get through.’

He adds that the explosion of the internet in China has made it easier for people to share and request information. ‘One of the great transformations of conversation in China in the last five to ten years has been the growth of the internet,’ he says.

‘One of the reasons it has been so important is that official media is censored strongly so trying to get a story in the People’s Daily, the main Party newspaper, would not be the best way to investigate a story. But the slightly freer media or the media that is attached to some of the very popular video sites that have millions and millions of viewers in China can be an effective way of doing that.’

Professor Mitter was speaking to the BBC’s TV programme, Impact Asia with Mishal Husain.

In a guest blog, Dr Oliver van Hecke, DPhil student in Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and Oxfordshire GP, explains why genetics may determine whether someone experiences multiple chronic diseases.

Chronic pain, depression and heart disease are three of the commonest causes of disability, and are becoming more prevalent in the population. Increasingly, some people will suffer from one or several of these long-term health problems in their lifetime, which is known as multimorbidity, but why? Is this simply down to bad luck or could there be an underlying cause, perhaps due to a shared familial risk, and/or genetic factors?

While we know that age, gender, social circumstances and lifestyle increase someone’s vulnerability to multiple causes of disability, research has now revealed that genetics can indeed play a role in determining whether someone experiences multiple chronic illnesses.

The new study, which we were involved with along with colleagues at the University of Dundee and Kings College, London, examined two major existing population cohorts (Generation Scotland and TwinsUK), for the likelihood of chronic pain, depression and heart disease co-occurring in both individuals and in their siblings. We found that people who had one of these illnesses were much more likely to have one or both of the other illnesses.

Interestingly, we identified a sibling link – the brothers or sisters of people with one of these illnesses were much more likely to have one of the other illnesses too, even after allowing for known social and demographic factors. For example, siblings of people with heart disease were twice as likely to have chronic pain, while siblings of those with depression were twice as likely to suffer from heart disease.

Using the twins data, we were able to show that genetics contributed to the co-occurrence of chronic widespread pain and heart disease in twins, in addition to important environmental contributions.

The finding that genes likely play a key role in determining whether someone experiences multiple chronic illnesses provides researchers new avenues to explore the underlying biological mechanisms between different conditions. Of course, as both a researcher and a clinician I realise it will always be important to address the social and demographic factors that cause disability and comorbidity, such as deprivation for example. However this new insight into the shared genetics of comorbidities may enable us to recognise these conditions earlier in the community. This would, in turn, allow us to focus on preventative therapies for these patients by targeting the underlying causes (such as stress or health inequalities) rather than the visible symptoms of the condition itself.

The full study, ‘Chronic pain, depression and cardiovascular disease linked through a shared genetic predisposition: Analysis of a family-based cohort and twin study,’ can be read in the journal PLOS ONE.