Áine Heffernan’s research into neurogenerative conditions has been years in the making. When she started her PhD in September 2020, she was uncertain about how her work would progress due to the Covid pandemic.
“Initially half of the lab would be in at one time and the other half of the lab would be in at another time so it was quite hard to get things up and running because no one was around to give you as much support and guidance as you would get now,” she explains.
“With scientific research, things never work out as you expect so you need to have perspective and resilience to get through machines breaking down and things not happening on the timeline you want them to happen.”
Now in her final PhD year, Áine’s research on Parkinson’s has been recognised within the medical and science communities. She recently won the University’s 3MT competition requiring doctoral researchers to compete to deliver the best research presentation in just three minutes.
Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disorder where the loss of neurons that produce a chemical messenger in your brain called dopamine means a loss of communication between the cells that coordinate our movement. This results in common symptoms such as tremors, muscle stiffness and slowing of movement.
A creative approach
Áine’s research aims to use a human stem cell model to understand the differences in a type of brain cell called astrocytes between those with Parkinson’s and healthy individuals. She is now using this information to explore different approaches which could make these diseased astrocytes healthy again.
She explains: “My research is focused on one cell type called astrocytes which have lots of important different roles in helping to support healthy brain functions such as supplying energy and fighting infections. This cell type has not really been studied before in the context of neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s.”
Áine had no expectation that she would win the 3MT competition as she was presenting her research to experts in her field at a conference in Greece the day before and then experienced a flight delay.
She says: “The day before the final I was at an important conference in Crete. My plane was delayed on the way home and I arrived back at my flat at 4am. I was just happy that I made it there in one piece and then winning the competition was a bonus. I had low expectations, and I didn’t have time to overthink anything, I just went up there and did it.”
From bench to bedside
Áine believes public engagement is an important factor of her research and often communicates her ideas with patients and nurses.
“In our lab, we promote the bench to bedside philosophy because we are based at the royal infirmary next to the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic and we work closely with many of the clinical staff based there,” she says.
“Patients often come into the lab with different neurodegenerative conditions, most commonly motor neuron disease. As a result, since I started my PhD, I’ve been showing patients, clinical nurses and government ministers the lab and the facilities that we have and what we’re trying to do so I know how to explain my research conversationally.”
But Áine said it was still difficult to condense her research into a three-minute presentation: “I could easily talk about my work for hours. I got advice from my supervisor, my friends in the lab and my parents on what the most important aspect of my work is and then I condensed it down and made it flow.”
“I ended up having 11 versions,” she adds. “The first version was quite different to the last version – every time I trimmed more and more out to make it more streamlined.”
The judges praised Áine’s storytelling in her presentation as well as her analogies, which they said engaged the audience.
She has some sage advice for people taking part in next year’s 3MT competition: “It’s important to test your talk on lots of different people and see what works and what doesn’t work for them. You are allowed to have a singular slide to go alongside your talk and usually people don’t put much work into the slide but the feedback I got was that my slide was good and complemented the actual talk, so it is worth spending time on it.”
Engaging with the Parkinson’s community
Áine’s interest in neurogenerative disorders started at an early age: “Neurodegenerative conditions are devastating disorders and that was how I became interested in the topic.”
“One of my first encounters as someone who had a neurodegenerative condition was when someone’s parent at school had Multiple Sclerosis and was in a wheelchair,” she adds.
I remember thinking how unfair it seemed. My grandmother had vascular dementia. These conditions are around us and I am trying to contribute to understanding more about why people get these diseases and how this knowledge could be used to find treatments to ease the burden for people.”
Áine did her undergraduate degree in neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin and then decided to do a PhD in Edinburgh due to her research interests.
“I’m from a rural area in Tipperary so I didn’t want to go to a big city – I immediately ruled out London. Obviously, there were cultural reasons to come to Edinburgh as Irish and Scottish people are quite similar, but from a research perspective, Edinburgh has a strong focus on stem cell biology, which is something I use a lot as a tool in my research, and also in glial cell biology, which includes astrocytes, which are one of the cells in our brain that I focus a lot on.”
Áine says the feedback she receives from patients has informed her research: “Sometimes they will say there is a Covid vaccine and that only took a year to produce so why is there no progress in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or motor neuron disease?
“The patients ask the hardest questions and sometimes give a different perspective which makes you think about things in a different way.”
Áine is currently adding the final touches to her thesis which she will submit this September 2024. In October, she will compete in the Universitas 21 3MT Competition, which will include PhD students from around the world.
Áine plans to continue her research into neurological conditions in the future: “I would like to stay in this field of stem cell biology and the broad spectrum of neurodegenerative conditions and combine a biochemical molecular perspective with a broader translational output,” she says.
“I think the best you can hope for is that you’re adding your small piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and you know that it will shed some light on some areas. Some of the research I work on is understudied in comparison to other areas so I hope it will give a new perspective on how to look at these disorders.”
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Image credit: Sam Ingram Sills
