Profile

Hi, I’m Esme 🙂 I live in Edinburgh with my boyfriend – I’ve only been up here a year so I love exploring the city!

Edinburgh Meadows in spring

Before that I lived in Cambridge for uni and grew up in Brighton with my mum and dad, my two sisters and our lovely dog Bruno. I love going on huge walks in the countryside whenever I can and hanging out in cafes with my pals depending on various covid restrictions!

Me and my friends on a big walk in the Pentland Hills just outside Edinburgh (which is in the background behind us!)

I also have a ridiculously large plant collection that’s starting to get out of hand and love baking although I’m not exactly great at it!

My too large plant collection

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, but what most people don’t know is that there are different types of breast cancer. I work on a type called lobular breast cancer, which doesn’t form a lump so is tricky to detect. There are no specific treatments for lobular breast cancer, so we’re trying to find things that are unique about this type of cancer that we can then target with drugs! Cancer cells rely on healthy cells around them to support and feed them, so I’m trying to see how exactly the cancer cells talk to the healthy cells, called fibroblasts, and if we can block them talking to each other to stop the cancer growing in patients.

I usually start working around 9ish at home. I spend the morning reading papers and analysing my data I’ve generated in the lab. I try and do some coding (which I’m not great at!) and see what interesting things I can find in my results! I might go to a few meetings on zoom too. I have lunch at home then head into the lab around half 1.  Pre-covid, I would spend my whole day in the lab but I’ve swapped to working half at home and half in the lab so we can better social distance!

My home desk and some attempted coding!

In the lab, I check on my cells and see if they’re growing happily,  then change their media (which contains all the nutrients they need to survive). As my cells grow quite slowly, experiments can take a few days to work, so I’ll often have a few different things on the go at once! I use lots of different techniques, so my days are often very different which is fun. I sometimes use a big microscope to see fluorescent markers in my cells and see if the amount of fluorescence changes when I block something. Other days I’ll mash the cells up and see if they’re expressing different proteins or genes.

This is how I look after my cells!

My colleagues and I got to meet some incredible lobular breast cancer patient advocates. We discussed our research with them and they told us what they think needs to be looked into from a patient perspective!

I’ll run experiments until around 5 or 6 – or later if an experiment takes a while – then head home. In the evening, I might go for a walk around the city for a bit or watch TV and bake or pre-covid, hang out with my lovely friends from work!

This is me and my wonderful friends from work – all first year PhD and Masters students at the IGMM!