You are a biologist researching blood cancers – when did you develop an interest in science?
I grew up in Hungary, and when I was about 12 I read a book by the Hungarian Nobel Prize-winner Albert Szent-Györgyi, who discovered vitamin C. He wrote about how molecules regulate things, and that set my mind on biology. I also enjoyed hiking, and I originally wanted to be an ecologist or a forest engineer, but my parents didn’t think that was a good idea. So I went back to my molecules.
What inspired you to move to Ireland?
During my PhD in Hungary, which looked at how cells in our immune system respond to stresses like injury or lack of oxygen, we were always told about the importance of getting experience of research abroad.
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I wanted to stay in Europe, and at the time Afshin Samali in Galway was looking for researchers in his lab, also exploring cell stresses. I moved here, supposedly for three years. That was 22 years ago.
You now have set up your own lab – what do you work on?
We are very interested in the niche or micro-environment where cancer lives in the body. We examine the bone marrow where someone has a blood cancer such as acute myeloid leukaemia or multiple myeloma or lymphoma.
The bone marrow environment evolves in ways that support the cancer, and I’m a firm believer that to treat cancer effectively you need to address the environment around the cancer cells as well. A lot of the work I do in this area is as part of the Precision Oncology Ireland programme.
Tell us more about the work that you do with blood cancer cells.
We work with cells and bone marrow samples that people with blood cancers – and people without blood cancers – have kindly donated for research to Blood Cancer Biobank Ireland.
I lead Blood Cancer Network Ireland, which co-ordinates the biobank and receives samples from around Ireland. We grow these biobanked cells in the lab and analyse what is going on in and around them biochemically, to figure out how different treatments might target them.
What kinds of treatments interest you?
We want to help the immune system to better eliminate cancer cells. For example, we look at what happens to a type of immune cell called a natural killer or NK cell around tumour cells.
We are finding out how these NK cells become exhausted around cancer cells, and are looking at ways to strengthen their function again. We have recently had success showing how lymphoma could be sensitised to NK cells in the lab, so that the immune cells can recognise and kill the cancer cells more effectively.
That’s very exciting. What’s the biggest challenge in your research?
I think it’s the complexity. If something doesn’t work as you expected, or you hit a dead end with an experiment, you need to work through many different factors and elements that could be at play.
And what is a good day in the lab?
That moment when something works well, when you know that it’s not just down to chance. And I love that our work combines basic biology with potential therapies. We are getting to a stage where companies might be interested in taking what we find closer to the clinic.
And what do you like to do when you are not in the lab?
I love to travel and see the world. I am really interested in the history; the different cultures.
