A good year for the snot doctors

Dr Gaynor Campbell shows off her tapioca 'snot'

The chance to celebrate their research at last year's Imperial Festival has led to a year of amazing opportunities for two lung researchers.

This time last year, Clinical Research Fellow Dr Natasha Gunawardana and Research Associate Dr Gaynor Campbell from Imperial’s National Heart and Lung Institute were thinking about snot.

They were preparing for the 2014 Imperial Festival by working out how to make their work on lung disease and allergies interesting and understandable, even for a five year old.

“We began by thinking about what we would have liked when we were kids and we settled on snot,” said Dr Campbell.

“Our day job as researchers is to study lung disease and allergies, but because the lungs are so difficult to reach, we look at noses instead. The lining of the nose is actually very similar to the lining of the lung,” said Dr Gunawardana.

Dr Natasha Gunawardana invites kids to look up her giant nose

Their discussions about how to interpret their research for Festival audiences led them to build a giant papier-mâché nose and make the bowls of tapioca ‘snot’. The Snot Doctors were born and became one of the biggest crowd-pullers at last year’s event. The researchers used them, alongside a ‘castle wall’ representing the lining of the nose, to discuss with visitors how our noses and the mucus they produce are our first line of defence against invading infections.

Visitors also got the chance to compete in a peak flow competition to see how powerful their lungs were and to use craft materials to make their own ‘antibodies’ against bacteria baddies. “Parents had to drag their kids away from our stand,” Dr Campbell said.

Children design and make antibodies

It was not only children who came to have fun and learn. Also among the crowds was a physiotherapist who asked the researchers to come and help with a course for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). People with COPD have difficulty breathing and can suffer with breathlessness, a phlegmy cough and frequent chest infections. The course is designed to help them manage their condition better.

Gundawardana and Campbell agreed, and their imaginative approaches to explaining breathing and the role of mucus have proved extremely helpful to this group of patients.

Dr Gundawardana said: “We’ve had great feedback from patients who we’ve met on the course. They tell us that it’s really helped them to understand their condition and, for example, why they have to use their inhaler a certain way to make sure the medicine is getting to the right place, or why they have to keep antibiotics at home in case they get an infection.”

Dr Campbell asks if bogies are bad or good?

Their presenting talents have been in demand elsewhere too. The pair were asked to feature in the Reach Out CPD programme aimed at supporting primary school science teaching that has been produced by Imperial in conjunction with primary science resource Tigtag.

You can take a look at the Snot Doctors in action in the video below

Campbell and Gunawardana have also presented at the Natural History Museum and taken their interactive exhibit to a local school, as well as bringing it back to Imperial for an event designed to get people from all backgrounds interested in studying medicine.

Dr Campbell said: “It can be difficult to find the time to do this kind of work in addition to our research but it’s extremely rewarding and we’ve been given a lot of support form our dear boss, Dr Trevor Hansel, and our Prof, Peter Openshaw.”

Dr Gunawardana added: “It’s also been instrumental in improving how we explain our research when we’re applying for ethical approval for new studies and asking patients to take part. It’s even given us new ideas and new opportunities for our research.”

The Snot Doctors' stand was a hit last last year's Festival and it will be bigger and better this year

The Snot Doctors with be returning, bigger and better, to this year’s Festival, held on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 May.

“This year we’ll be bringing an even bigger nose, big enough to climb inside; it’s like a walk-in nose,” said Dr Campbell.

More information about the Imperial Festival