Shyreen Hassibi

Shyreen Hassibi is a PhD student at the National Heart and Lung Institute in the Airways Disease Section.

It was always Imperial

I’m a Londoner. I was born and raised in West London, in Hillingdon. That's why I always really liked Imperial College London, even as a child. On the weekend, we would always drive past and then I attended outreach events at Imperial. And here I am now!

I enjoyed science a lot when I was a kid. When I was in primary school Imperial hosted a summer school programme that I attended. Later during high school I was part of the Young Gifted and Talented and Excited STEM program, which had a collaboration with Imperial where we did science and engineering. We got to do things like extracting DNA from strawberries and even building a trebuchet! And so I really enjoyed science from the start. I took part in all the outreach events at Imperial I could on the weekends and the STEM world summer schools - my parents just wanted to get rid of me in the summer holidays!

I did my undergraduate degree at Imperial in Biomedical Science, I think it's now called BMB. I enjoyed studying respiratory science in my undergraduate studies at Imperial, and in particular I enjoyed learning about lung diseases. This led me to contact my personal tutor, Dr Duncan Rogers, and seek advice on getting respiratory research experience. This was when I was introduced to Professor Louise Donnelly and Dr Jonathan Baker, and I was able to undertake two research projects during my summer holidays under their supervision, studying the ‘ageing phenotype’ of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients and the effect of micro RNAs and ‘anti-ageing molecules’ (called sirtuins). I am thankful for all of my supervisors and lecturers who motivated and supported me to continue in research. I am especially grateful to Dr Duncan Rogers and Professor Louise Donnelly, as I wouldn’t be where I am without them!

I was just captivated by my research project - so I wanted to carry on investigating, especially with COPD. So I then studied Biomedical Research (Respiratory and Cardiovascular Science) MRes at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) and now I am doing my PhD with Professor Donnelly to look into it further. Right now we don't have a treatment that reverses COPD, so we only manage it and the management is not that good. We need to find a cure for COPD. It is somewhere my research could have a massive impact. Obviously if you get the right information, you could really change the landscape for lots of people.

With smoking-induced COPD you see an increase in aged cells in the lung. Macrophages normally eat these cells, but I found they are less able to in COPD patients."

I'm dedicated to my research, but luckily I’m also a chocoholic. Everyone knows I’m powered by sugar."

It's good to play sports, it opens my mind. If I have a writing block, I do tend to get an idea while I'm playing."

Object one: Certificate

This certificate is from the first talk that I'd ever given at a conference. It was also the first conference I attended to present my PhD work that was in person to a large scientific audience. It's the European Respiratory Society Lung Science conference, where all the European respiratory scientists met in Portugal, and I was selected for a best abstract award.

I work on COPD, that is, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. COPD is lung disease caused by accelerated ageing, so we see increased ageing in the lung. These aged cells, called senescence cells, are kind of like zombie cells, as they are alive within the body but no longer function normally. Senescence cells can no longer divide and quite often show other changes from their former active selves. In COPD we see an accumulation of these senescent zombie cells and I wanted to investigate why we see this accumulation. These aged cells are supposed to be cleared by the immune system. The main way is via macrophages, which are the immune cell that are supposed to eat bacteria, viruses and dead cells to clean up the body. I looked into whether these macrophages were eating these aged cells, and I found that these macrophages can't clear them. At the moment, I don't know why - they just have reduced clearance in COPD compared to healthy people. This shows a reason, or mechanism, for the increased ageing we see in patients with COPD. I also found that macrophages have this change in phenotype with age as well, we call this immunosenescence, which means immune system ageing.

All of this means that lung function decline is accelerated in people with COPD. We normally see peak lung function at about 25 years old, and then, with increasing age, you get a decline in lung function. But in COPD, the decline curve is steeper, it's more accelerated, so at age 60 years old a person with COPD is more like an 80 year old without COPD. This then has quite a massive impact on that person's day to day life, and of course those around them.

People tend to get COPD after many years of smoking, roughly smoking for twenty ‘pack years’, and they tend to be between 50 to 80 years old. People with COPD have a continuous chesty cough, they cough up mucus and phlegm and have really bad respiratory system symptoms.

Object two: Chocolate boxes

I'm a chocoholic and if you ask anyone in the lab, they know that you need to keep me pumped full of sugar, sweets and chocolates. That's me. I'm always eating cake. You can ask Louise, my supervisor, when we're abroad at conferences all my colleagues will be having a proper lunch, and I'll be there with a massive plate of pancakes!

I’ve always had a sweet tooth, from when I was young. I used to bring in packs of doughnuts, Krispy Kreme would do ‘Doughnut Wednesday's’, which were buy one get one free, so I’d get something like two dozen doughnuts to bring to the office and pump everyone full of sugar.

It’s important to treat yourself and keep yourself motivated so you can focus and be productive in the lab when you are doing your research. Also science is about collaborating and working as a team, as much as it is individual effort and drive, so making an effort to bond with your colleagues ultimately helps your research – plus who doesn’t like doughnuts! Our team here at the NHLI is very nice, we've got a good culture and vibe. In the lab and even outside the lab, we do a lot of social activities. The people, the culture, the research that we do, is all very high quality.

We always do these interesting studies and then we read about them in the newspaper, a lot are published in Nature that you then see in newspapers like The Telegraph and on the news. It’s great to see that reflection of the fact that the research that we do is at a high standard and has a wider impact. This was especially noticeable during the COVID-19 pandemic when it was exciting see the impact that your work is having in the real world, and for the wider public to be informed by the work of our scientists.

Object three: Tennis racquet

It's good to have a work life balance as a researcher. I think to get rid of any stress and pressure you have from work, it's good to play sports and do exercise. I like to play racquet sports, like tennis and badminton. Since the weather’s been very wet and unpredictable, I missed playing tennis. So I started to learn to play squash with my colleague on the weekend at Imperial’s sports centre 'Ethos'. I have found that playing squash has improved my wellbeing and confidence, and reduced any anxiety.

I also like going to the gym and trying out new classes with friends. Exercising also helps maintain my health as we spend our days in the lab either sitting down for hours or going up and down four flights of stairs!

It's nice to go out for a walk, get some fresh air and enjoy being outdoors- as well as get some extra Vitamin D! It feels like it opens up my mind. So, if I have a writing block or troubleshooting an experiment, it does help me get an idea. While I'm playing sports I will suddenly think “ah ha, I should try…”, or “I can write it in this way and I'll get that to work”.

Framed certificate from respiratory conference

"Teaching means I get to see new people coming through, it's always exciting see that new influx of people to science"

Paying it forward

Alongside my research project I really enjoy teaching undergraduate students, like the MBBS Year 2 Clinical Research and Innovation and Year 4 BSc Respiratory Project students. I also helped design and supervise a lab research project for year 2 medical students, which they then present as a poster part of their assessment.

I love teaching, doing tutorials, chatting with students, answering questions and trying to further their interest in science. I like telling them about my research so I can encourage them to think about what they'd like to do for research when they finish their studies. Teaching means I get to see new people coming through, it's always exciting see that new influx of people to science.

Looking to the future

In ten year’s time I will hopefully be working at a university doing some high quality research, maybe have my own team, my own students even? I don't know if ten years would be too soon to have accomplished that, but that’s my goal. It would be the dream to have my own group and do my own research.

If I had the power to change one thing in research it would be around collaboration and funding. We often collaborate with large pharmaceutical companies who will fund a research project, and during that work we might come across something interesting, and we pitch it to them for further research to get a fuller picture of a disease or understanding a particular mechanism in the body. We need more money to be able to carry on that research, but of course funders are not always interested in a different part of the story, and they don't really want to carry on. That can be quite gutting that they don't find it as interesting as we do! If there were funds for more exploratory and collaborative research I think it would be very exciting for science, allowing us to learn even more and hopefully benefit even more people.